When I was a junior officer, we suffered a much higher mishap rate than we do now, and the Naval Safety Center would issue a weekly summary of mishaps for prominent display on the tack boards in squadron common rooms. I first became aware of the weekly summaries in my first jet training squadron, but couldn’t by myself puzzle out the coding used to classify aircraft damages and personal injuries. Finally I mustered up the courage to ask an instructor what the various codes meant.
He told me that an “Alpha” code against an airframe meant that the plane had either been destroyed or suffered over a million dollars worth of damage, “Bravo” level damage was between $100,000 and $1 million, and “Charlie” was less than $100k. I asked him what the personnel injury codes meant, and he replied that it was analgous: “Alpha” meant that the crewman had died, “Bravo” meant that he had sustained permanent, debilitating injuries and “Charlie” meant that he would probably make a full recovery.
Eventually I came to notice another injury code that seemed to recur, but that didn’t fit into the previously described categories. I asked the same IP what the injury code “Lima” meant.
“Lima,” he said, “means ‘lost at sea.’”
This reduction of human loss and tragedy to bureaucratic code seemed the most chilling thing I had yet discovered. Each week I’d read the summary, trying to learn from the dry language printed there a way of avoiding a similar fate. It was always very brief recitation of the barest facts:
Aircraft Type: A-6E / Mishap Category: ALPHA / Narrative: Failed to return from mission / Injuries: 2 LIMA
That “2 LIMA” meant that two souls had been lost at sea – a fate that seemed to me the most horrible of all. Death is death of course, but we do need our closure rituals and mourning rites. There is something so especially tragic about lives lost at sea and therefore imperfectly mourned that this news in the LA Times seems almost welcome:
The bodies of three helicopter crew members killed in a crash off San Clemente Island have been recovered, the Navy announced Saturday.
Recovered were the remains of Lt. j.g. Laura Mankey, Lt. Adam Dyer and Petty Officer 1st Class Cory Helman.
“These were our shipmates, our friends; we are proud to have served with them and to now have them home,” said Capt. John Hardison, Commodore, Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Pacific.
The MH-60S Knighthawk helicopter crashed Jan. 26 during routine training. Efforts to recover the wreckage to help determine the cause of the crash will continue, officials at Naval Base Coronado said.
Some times we must give thanks for small blessings.
Shipmates,
And how especially hard it is, when you know the names and faces that those letters represent. To see someone you cared about, spent time with, shared so much with, reduced to a few bits of brevity for the sake of space and time. A single sheet of plain typed paper, tacked to a board in some far-off space, that soon will be filed away and then discarded.
Life is so very precious, and the tasks we take upon our shoulders so very dangerous. That is why the bonds between shipmates are so strong. We live on through each other.
Respects,
“…for those who peril in the air…”
AW1 Tim:
Amen….very well spoken. Thanks.
Aviation is, even in these highly advanced days, not a guaranteed thing. And military aviation, more so. Yet incredible people like yourselves still go up, knowing what might happen. That is courage, no matter how you slice it. My thanks, my appreciation, and my condolences go out to the families of those lost souls.
Rev 20:13 “The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.”
They will all come home one day.
Everyone who takes that risk knows that whether in a prison camp, behind enemy lines or at the bottom of the ocean every possible attempt at recovery will be made to bring you home.
I remember a jet where control was lost and one got out, the other didn’t..
Came to rest in fairly deep water in SoCal. A squadron mate went down as crewmember in a DSRV several weeks later. They extracted the crewmwember with a mech type arm. His description of the event reverberates still.
Other friends and acquintances rest in water around the globe so deep, technology may never recover them. However, once or twice a year over my lifetime, from frozen wastes of the Artic to high mountain ridges in New Gunuiea, airmen lost in the past come home. As long as the US stands they will not be forgotten and may come home yet, in this world.
b2
Badbob, that sounds like the ‘94 Hultgreen mishap that happened off SoCal. RIO got out OK after the Turkey rolled but “Revlon” was .4 sec too late and ejected into the water.
The forensic aircraft search for a plane missing for decades has more than a little element of spiritual guidance involved. Turn here, turn there, circle here, hover there. A minute flash of light on tiny scraps of metal. A subtle nudge inside. A different voice in the headphones –”Did you just say something?” you ask over the engine noise. Your living crew member replies “Just now? No –did you?”. By now you both know better than to look at each other. This is so common neither of you think its spooky any more. Your kneeboard log shows the time and the “additional inputs”. It’s your handwriting, but you really don’t recall making the entry.
You’re looking for friends you never met who would do the same for you. Of course they’re right there with you, helping in some way.
Where else would they be? Well, besides the cantina anyway.
“And Death shall have no dominion…”
It wasn’t too long ago that I recall reading a story on Defenselink News about a World War I MIA soldier whose remains had been recovered and returned to his family for burial.
More than two generations had passed – but he still had a family member that knew he was missing. From the time when my grandfather was a five year old boy.
Bryan
CPT J, your post gave me shivers. But the good kind. For a moment, I felt like I was there.
Aircraft Type: A-6E / Mishap Category: ALPHA / Narrative: Failed to return from mission / Injuries: 2 LIMA
Sounds like one my brother told me about from when he was on the Nimitz during wargames off the North Cape of Norway in the mid-1980’s. It just disappeared. No radio transmission indicating trouble, no wreckage or debris, no nothing.