Super Hornet Blows off USS Harry S Truman

Yikes, that must have been some rough seas. Expensive, too.
 
That shouldn’t happen if properly secured. Maybe a cable snapped or there was some sort of mechanical failure. If it was human error, it’s going to be someone’s career.
 
I assume “replenishment at sea” means unrep. If it had gone into the gap between the two ships, fouling the hose rigging…😱
 
It's not like they're using those ratcheting tie-downs you use on an RV trailer, either. Normally, the aircraft are secured with a dozen chains. The chains are attached to different points (gear, wheel wells, hard points on the fuselage, and at the wing hinge).
I've seen photos of them tied down with 30 or 40 chains per plane in a storm (6 on just the nose gear alone), so either the storm was really bad or someone wasn't checking the chains.

Oops. It could have been worse. That aircraft could have damaged other aircraft on its way to the deep six, or like @Capt MJ suggests - fouling replenishment lines between ships could have been what they call "really bad".
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Capt MJ said:
I assume “replenishment at sea” means unrep. If it had gone into the gap between the two ships, fouling the hose rigging…😱
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Purely based on chance, I expect that particular scenario to not have happened. Lots of scenarios pop up for me and it may be only tangentially connected to the replenishment as in the ship entering changing severe weather but unable to maneuver to minimize wind/seas as it would normally.
Another scenario would be plane being respotted (moved) to provide necessary access to fueling point or other thing and plane not fully secured before wind/seas took it.
Many other possible causes come to mind.
 
They used the word unexpected, which to me makes the @OldRetSWO speculation that it wasn't fully tied down sound plausible.
 
1. I am glad I don’t have to do the investigation. 2. The amount of training everyone will have to go through will be amazing. Big loss though that was probably preventable (or maybe it wasn’t, none of us were there and who know what led it up to it all).
 
There you are, having a nice cup of coffee on the bridge, skipper and air wing commander chatting, maybe a nice hot plate of fresh cinnamon buns sent up by the skipper’s mess cook, another day at sea - and oh, 🤬🤬🤬🤬. One minute it’s there, the next, a pile of money overboard and a very large pile of poop has hit the fan. Reports, investigations, findings of fault.. consequences, lessons learned. Every other carrier skipper and air wing and squadron commander taking a round turn on aircraft SOP in these conditions.
 
It's only money. OK... A lot of money. Fortunately it appears that there was not any loss of life.

I'm sure there is very little sleeping going on in the officers' quarters.
 
brewmeist said:
I'm sure there is very little sleeping going on in the officers' quarters.
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Many hundreds of officers on a CVN. I seriously doubt that many of them are being heavily affected by this.

I was not ships company aboard the myriad of carriers that I visited but I'd venture that the Air Boss (O5), Mini Boss, Handler, and probably a Div O or two might be feeling some heat but the vast majority of officers aboard are really bystanders to this. Of course the ship CO and XO are also in the line of fire here.
 
These are V-1 Division personnel responsible for aircraft movement on the flight deck. The Fight Deck Officer is in charge of V-1 :

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Imagine a Super Hornet being “re-spotted” on the flight deck instead of the C-2, Greyhound, seen here. V-1 personnel would have been involved in re-spotting the mishap F/A-18. An aircraft can be maneuvered by pulling or pushing using attach points on either end of the tractor (“tug” in flight/hangar deck parlance). If the F-18 was being sent to the hangar bay (one deck below) for maintenance, it more than likely was pushed onto the deck edge elevator buy the tug. The aircraft director (left), with palms facing down, is looking directly at the tractor driver indicating “easy, easy, slow, slow.” There are wing walkers and two, barely discernable, blue shirts carrying aircraft chocks next to the main mounts. A brake rider is in the cockpit. Aircraft chains are on the “hood” of the tractor.

Here is my armchair take:
In the F-18 mishap, was the tow bar and tractor hooked up to the aircraft for positive control? Sailors do crazy things. An unforgivable error in the re-spot would have been to remove the chocks and chains so that flight deck personnel could man handle or nudge the aircraft into a slightly different position allowing the tow bar to be attached. There are other reasons they might try to “muscle” the aircraft. An untimely roll in the sea state the ship was in, coupled with strong winds and a ship’s course change, perhaps got the F-18 moving. If so, Hercules himself wasn’t going to stop the momentum of a plane with a gross weight of more than 40,000 pounds as it headed to the deck edge. Part of me wonders if the sailor injured was the brake rider. I can imagine him jumping from the aircraft before it went overboard. There will be some tough questions asked on this Class A mishap.
 
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