A-6E Cold Cat Launch

The cat shot was fine, the plane had an engine problem. By the way, the pilot was featured on Discovery Channel's "Fortress at Sea". Both guys survived, thank God. Pretty scary.

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That perfectly explains why the plane yaws to the right on T-O.

I was one of the troubleshooters on this cruise for VA-85. In fact I was standing on Cat2 when 511 went off the cat. The starboard engine stalled, you cant see it here, but if you look at the original video from the PLAT, you can clearly see the starboard engine has no exhaust. This happened off the coast of Norway. It was wild to find this video on the web

really a cool video of A-6E Crash...First the pilot dropped fuel tank,he think that he may get speed but...after useless effort he ejected on the right time....good timing

NAjAM

Both Men survived, the were featured in one Discovery channel Video about Carriers and the pilot explains what happened.

As a side note. The pilot of that A-6 was Commander Rick "Twig" Labranche, the former C/O of VF-31. Rick was lucky enough to not only survive the ejection, but to also transfer to an F-14 squadron and command it. He commanded the squadron throughtout the last Tomcat deployment on the TR.

Just found this link http://www.unabb.com/A-6-crash-after-launch-8186964x1608.htm where there are several opinions and memories... It looks as though it was an engine failure during the launch, most people say both pilots survived, others say the Navigator didn't make it.

The accident datas look like this: BuNo 154148/A-6E, VA-85, 09/18/91, Mediterranean, CV-66, Lost engine on cat shot.

As for the pilot and WSO's fate I'll do some searches on the web.
I was too amazed on how long they kept the A-6 flying; in my opinion they could have tried not to keep the Angle of Attack as high as they kept during the last phase when they gained some height above the sea and the decision to jettison the tanks came probably late.
But hey! I'm saying this comfortably sit in front of the PC screen so... I just hope that the 2 guys were ok after the ejection! :-)

did the pilots survive this? It looks like one of their chutes opened right as they hit the water

It's pretty amazing how long that Intruder flew before stalling. It almost looked as if they were gonna be able to save the aircraft.

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