E-2C Hawkeye struck parked Super Hornet’s training AIM-9X during bolter

No one in the E-2C Hawkeye or on the deck were injured in the mishap.

On Aug. 23, 2020 a US Navy E-2C Hawkeye command and control aircraft hit a captive air training AIM-9X missile attached to a parked F/A-18 Super Hornet strike fighter while landing aboard the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

According to Lt. Cmdr. Liza Dougherty, a Carrier Strike Group 11 spokeswoman, no one in the Hawkeye or on the deck were injured in the mishap.

As reported by Navy Times, it happened after the Hawkeye experienced a “hook-skip bolter,” where the hook of an aircraft landing on a carrier fails to catch the runway wires that stop the plane.

Dougherty said in an email that the mishap took place at about 4:30 p.m. local time while the carrier was underway in the Middle Eastern waters of U.S. 5th Fleet.

The incident remains under investigation and the damage to both aircraft was “minor,” she said.

Dougherty added that the damage “is currently being repaired in order to return the aircraft to full mission readiness.”

“While the aircraft in question did sustain damage during the incident, Carrier Air Wing 17 and the Nimitz Strike Group remains fully mission capable,” she said.

The Naval Safety Center classified the incident as a “Class A” mishap, which involves more than $1 million in damages.

That botched landing is at least the second Class A mishap involving a Hawkeye in recent weeks.

As we have previously reported in fact, on Aug. 31 an E-2C assigned to Airborne Command & Control Squadron (VAW) 120 Fleet Replacement Squadron on board Naval Station Norfolk, crashed during a training flight in Accomack County in Virginia, near the NASA flight center on Wallops Island.

The two pilots and two crew members bailed out of the aircraft safely through the main cabin door.

Another incident involving a US Navy Hawkeye took place on Aug. 9, 2019, when an E-2D struck two F/A-18 Super Hornet  and sent debris flying into two other F/A-18s on the flight deck while attempting to land aboard the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea.

No personnel were injured in that mishap.

Photo credit: U.S. Navy