Night dive.

After a thorough brief that included all necessary safety of flight coordination and emphasized the requirement that all defensive maneuvers be level turns in assigned altitude blocks, three of four scheduled F-14 Tomcats launched at night from the carrier to assume the blue air role against four red air Hornets. All crews were wearing night vision devices during the tactical portions of the mission. During the first two intercepts, the Dash-3 Tomcat was operating as a "light section" (single aircraft).

In the middle of the second run, the Dash-3 pilot ignored the briefed maneuvering mandate and reefed the Tomcat into an aggressive, nose-low vertical dive starting from 29,000 feet. Due to the violent nature of the maneuver and the prevailing atmospherics (scattered clouds and no moon illumination), the crew lost situational awareness somewhere during the dive. They continued with the tactical scenario, assuming that their altitude would afford them plenty of time to recover.

As the F-14 passed through 7,000 feet, the pilot started what appeared to be a mild dive recovery. At 5,000 feet the airplane was still in a 45-degree dive, airspeed in excess of 600 knots. The Tomcat continued a shallow recovery until it hit the water. No wreckage was found during the search and rescue effort, nor was there any evidence of an attempted ejection. Both aircrew members were lost at sea.

During the mishap investigation, several squadron radio intercept officers stated that the mishap pilot had done a similar maneuver when flying with them, but none had debriefed him on their concerns or mentioned anything to squadron leadership.

Grampaw Pettibone says:

Now Gramps has heard every type of arm-waving rant regarding how safety-of-flight rules artificially bind crews during training and keep aviators from being ready for the real thing, and to that I say what I've always said when doused with such vinegar: "Bunk!" Sure, we need aggressive brownshoes, but no amount of Type-A is going to counter King Neptune's pond or Mother Earth, whether there's shooting going on or not. Let Gramps--a veteran of a brushfire or two--tell you that the rules don't change once the bubble goes up; in fact, they get tougher. No flight discipline, no victory. Plain and simple.

And Gramps don't have much use for those who come slinking out of the woodwork gripped by the guilts after the fact, either. Last I checked, flying air machines wasn't a popularity contest. Now I ain't talking about bilging a shipmate, confound it! I'm telling you shipmates don't let shipmates break the rules. And speaking of rules; with this mishap you can add some more blood to what writes them.

Illustrations by Ted Wilbur