Fighter jet landing on US aircraft carrier goes overboard
The two pilots on board were forced to eject and later rescued by helicopter, suffering minor injuries in the incident.
A fighter jet landing on the USS Harry S Truman aircraft carrier in the Red Sea went overboard, forcing its two pilots to eject, according to a defence official.
The incident on Tuesday, involving an F/A-18 aircraft, marks the latest mishap to mar the deployment of the Truman, which has been essential in the airstrike campaign by the United States against Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
On Tuesday, US president Donald Trump and Oman’s foreign minister both said a ceasefire had been reached with the Houthis, who would no longer target ships in the Red Sea corridor — something not immediately acknowledged by the rebels.
Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell wrote on social platform X that an investigation was under way and that “this aircraft was not struck by the Houthis”.
“The Harry S Truman Carrier Strike Group remains fully mission-capable,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Houthis continue to assess the damage after daytime Israeli airstrikes targeted Yemen’s rebel-held capital of Sanaa.
The F/A-18 Super Hornet landed on the Truman after a flight, but “the arrestment failed”, the official told The Associated Press.
“Arrestment” refers to the hook system used by aircraft landing on carriers, which catches steel wire ropes on the flight deck. It remains unclear what part of the system failed.
The two pilots on board were later rescued by a helicopter and suffered minor injuries in the incident, the official added. No-one on the flight deck was hurt.
CNN first reported the incident.
Tuesday’s incident was the latest to see the US navy lose an F/A-18, which costs about 60 million US dollars (£45 million). In April, another F/A-18 fighter jet slipped off the hangar deck of the Truman and fell into the Red Sea. The crew members who were in the pilot seat of the Super Hornet and on the small towing tractor both jumped away.
In December, the guided-missile cruiser the USS Gettysburg mistakenly shot down an F/A-18 after ships earlier shot down multiple Houthi drones and an anti-ship cruise missile launched by the rebels. Both aviators in that incident also survived.
And in February, the Truman collided with a merchant vessel near Port Said in Egypt.
The Truman, based out of Norfolk, Virginia, has seen its deployment extended multiple times amid the Houthi airstrike campaign. It had been joined recently by the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier operating out of the Arabian Sea.
The Israeli attack on Tuesday that targeted Sanaa International Airport devastated the airfield.
Khaled al-Shaif, the head of the airport, told the Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel that the Israeli strike had destroyed the airport’s terminal and left craters in its runway.
At least six passenger planes were struck, including three belonging to Yemenia Airways, the country’s flag-carrying airline, he said.
This left the airline with only one functional aircraft, which was spared only because it had left earlier in the day on a flight to Amman, Jordan.
He put the overall damage at 500 million US dollars (£374 million).
With the damage, the airport was now out of service, al-Shaif said.
The Houthis had been waging persistent missile and drone attacks against commercial and military ships in the region in what the group’s leadership has described as an effort to end Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
From November 2023 until January 2025, the Houthis targeted more than 100 merchant vessels with missiles and drones, sinking two of them and killing four sailors. This has greatly reduced the flow of trade through the Red Sea corridor, which typically sees one trillion US dollars of goods move through it annually.
The Houthis paused attacks in a self-imposed ceasefire until the US launched a broad assault against the rebels in mid-March.
