A US Navy fighter jet worth around $70 million ended up at the bottom of the Red Sea on Monday after it rolled off an aircraft carrier taking part in operations against Yemen's Houthi rebels. "The F/A-18E was actively under tow in the hangar bay when the move crew lost control of the aircraft. The aircraft and tow tractor were lost overboard," the Navy said in a statement said. Officials say the crew member in the fighter jet and the crew member in the tractor were able to jump clear in time, with one crew member suffering a minor injury, ABC News reports.
Fighter jets are "routinely towed around the hangar deck to park them where they are needed for any flight operations or other work," the AP notes. It's not clear what went wrong on Monday, but a defense source tells CNN that initial reports suggest the aircraft carrier made a hard turn to evade Houthi fire. "An investigation is underway," the Navy statement said.
This is the third recent incident during the Truman's Middle East deployment, the Wall Street Journal reports. The commander of the Truman strike group was fired in February, days after the aircraft carrier was damaged in a collision with a merchant ship near Port Said, Egypt. In a friendly fire incident in December, the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg, another vessel in the strike group, shot down an an F/A-18F fighter jet that had taken off from the Truman. Both pilots survived. (More fighter jet stories.)
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