
DATE: Thursday, August 14, 1997             TAG: 9708140435

SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER 

                                            LENGTH:   72 lines

PILOT EJECTED THROUGH PLEXIGLAS F-14 CANOPY

A Virginia Beach fighter pilot was mysteriously ejected through the canopy of his F-14 Tomcat moments after he landed on the carrier John C. Stennis on Tuesday, and had to be rescued from the Atlantic.

His radar intercept officer, sitting in the back seat, was not ejected and received only minor injuries from the canopy's splintering Plexiglas, the Navy said Wednesday. He climbed to safety from the plane.

The pilot, who received only minor injuries, was plucked from the sea within minutes of the 10:30 p.m. mishap, which Navy officials characterized as baffling.

Blasted skyward by his rocket-powered seat, the pilot drifted over the carrier's fantail on a parachute that deployed automatically after the ejection, and was pulled from the water by a rescue helicopter from Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron 5, based in Jacksonville, Fla.

The Stennis was operating 105 miles east of Virginia Beach, providing flight training for about 30 aircraft assigned to its air wing. Both Tomcat aviators were assigned to Fighter Squadron 143, based at Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. Neither was identified by the Navy on Wednesday.

What has baffled investigators, Navy spokesmen said, is that the normal ejection sequence calls for the canopy to leave the aircraft first, then the radar intercept officer, followed by the pilot.

Why the system malfunctioned is not known, the Navy said.

``That is the mystery,'' said Lt. Cmdr. Mark McDonald, a spokesman for the Atlantic Fleet. ``Why it happened that way is what they are trying to figure out.''

McDonald and other spokesmen said the jet apparently landed normally, catching one of the four arresting cables that are strung across the deck. The cable grabs the plane's tailhook and brings it to a sudden stop.

Normally, at that point, the tailhook retracts, dropping the cable to the deck and enabling the pilot to taxi on the carrier's flight deck.

But at some point in that sequence, the pilot's ejection seat exploded him through the canopy.

McDonald said he could not explain how the aircraft stopped, or parked, once the pilot had been ejected.

The pilot was treated aboard ship, and the radar intercept officer was later treated at the Naval Medical Center in Portsmouth for a lacerated finger. Both are scheduled to return to duty.

The fact the Plexiglas canopy did not leave the aircraft was a blessing for the back seat crewman, said one officer.

``If that canopy had gone and then the pilot followed, the RIO would have been fried by the rocket motors on the ejection seat,'' he said. ``But because part of the canopy remained over the RIO's head, he wasn't burned.''

The aircraft was basically undamaged, except for the loss of the front seat and half the canopy. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

Graphic

THE INCIDENT

After an apparently normal landing on the carrier's deck, the

pilot's rocket-powered seat blasts him through the Plexiglas canopy.

His parachute deploys automatically, and he drifts over the

carrier before coming down in the Atlantic Ocean, where he is

rescued. He suffers minor injuries.

The radar intercept officer, sitting in the back seat, suffers a

lacerated finger from the splintering canopy. He was protected from

being burned by the ejection seat's rocket motors because the canopy

remained in place.