A Navy fighter jet that blew over the edge of the USS Harry S. Truman and into the Mediterranean Sea last month was successfully recovered, Navy officials said Monday.
The F/A-18E Super Hornet was recovered last week from a depth of approximately 9,500 feet by a team from Task Force 68, which embarked on the recovery on the multipurpose construction vessel Everest.
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“Inherent to Task Force 68 is our ability to adapt to any mission set – we can rapidly mobilize and deploy scalable command, control, and communications, in order to seamlessly integrate and provide forward command and control when and where needed,” said the task force’s commodore, Capt. Geoffrey Townsend, in a press release.
Search and recovery took less than 24 hours from the time the plane was located, and the operation occurred within 27 days of the incident, Lt. Cmdr. Miguel Lewis, U.S. Sixth Fleet salvage officer, said in the release. A CURV-21 remotely operated vehicle was used to attach specialized rigging and lift lines to the aircraft, which was then hoisted aboard Everest.
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The aircraft went overboard in July during a round of “unexpected bad weather,” the Navy said at the time. One sailor suffered minor injuries during the storm. At the time of the incident, the aircraft carrier was conducting a “replenishment-at-sea” mission, which was safely terminated, according to the Navy, and had been sailing in the Ionian Sea.
The aircraft was returned to a nearby military installation and will be transported back to the United States, the Navy said.
