I find it a little odd that Memorial Day and Veterans Day have seemed to morph into the same thing for a lot of people. As much as I appreciate "thanks for your service", I won the bet.
I came home.
Today is about those who didn't.
As dangerous as it is, the mortality rate is much lower among aviators. There are a lot of reasons for that. As the saying goes "aviation in itself is not inherently dangerous, just terribly unforgiving of mistakes." So training pummels the chances of a mistake out of the people involved in aviation. The ground crews are the cream of the crop. The air crew are buffeted by experience and repeated testing, simulations of everything that could ever go wrong.
That said, I quit counting at 12. All accidents. One could technically be called a wartime casualty since it happened during Bosnia. That was also a close friend.
I had lunch with Scott in the dirty shirt wardroom on the USS Saratoga. We were supporting the early effort in Bosnia, the ship was going in circles in the Adriatic Sea.
As I was airborne in the overhead stack at angels 4 (4000') he launched in his F/A-18C off catapult one - the rightmost catapult on the bow of an aircraft carrier. He started a clearing turn to the right which is normal, then the jet started an uncommanded pitch up while over rolling until inverted. He ejected. A little before 1600, on April 28th 1994.
Hitting the water at 170 miles an hour is not recommended.
They cancelled the next two cycles. We had a memorial ceremony in the hangar bay. Then we were back at it.
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