Hellcat Crash And A Very Brave Man...

[Jim MacDonald]

Tony's right on both counts. In his book , Paddles, LSO John Harper describes this accident in detail. Wescott was slow getting out of the arresting gear, Harper was trying to keep tight intervals between planes & was still waving Curry in when a fouled deck was finally called. Harper was just about to give the cut when the fouled deck was called & accidentally did give the cut when he intended to give a wave off. He called it his "Darkest Day".

Mac

[Jack Cook]

That makes perfect sense Jim. The landing pilot would have been focused completly on the LSO. To do otherwise is one of the greatest and most dangerous sins of CV aviation ie spotting the deck. I'm sure neither pilot saw it coming. You can see #1 is still just clearing the gear has the barriers haven't been raised again. #2 is landing a little long so he must have had some extra speed. you can see he's still got flying speed has one wheel and the hook are airborne and he's gone past most of the CDPs. Has they say about accidents, it's all a chain of events. One change and a accident becomes a incident. #1 was to slow out of the gear, #2 was long and high and the LSO waited to long to wave off and then gave the cut in error. A darn shame with one guy KIFA and 2 others with PTSD

[t308]

Graff says that the accident occurred on 11 Feb 1945.

VF-21's combat cruise was over by then and the squadron disestablished.

Indeed. These are VF-30 aircraft.

[Jack Cook]

Indeed. These are VF-30 aircraft

Thank you for the correction (which was already known) on a ''17'' year old post!

[Jim MacDonald]

The BuNo in the accident report for Westcott's plane is wrong. According to the Overseas Loss List the actual BuNo is 72638.
Sorry for the large size. I don't know how to make them smaller.

Mac