On February 20th, 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was conducting flight operations in the Persian Gulf. Early that morning, the crew was preparing to launch an A-6 Intruder off the flight deck when things went terribly wrong for petty officer J.D. Bridges.

That morning, Mr. Bridges was training a new recruit. The recruit successfully secured the plane’s front landing gear to the catapult, and Mr. Bridges went in to verify the recruits work. However, in a momentary lapse in judgement, he got too close to the jet intake and was sucked inside. Luckily, he put his arm up which helped get him wedged into the intake for a few seconds… those few vital seconds it took for his helmet to damage the turbine blades after it was sucked off his head. His helmet caused the blades to slow down and lessen the pressure inside the intake long enough for the pilot to shut the engines down. Miraculously, he crawled out under his own power.

I’ve embedded 3 videos of the incident (in the following order): a quick clip of what happened, a longer segment from Spike TV, and a much more detailed segment from the History Channel. Enjoy!

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)

This last video requires you to wait a few seconds for the person to change the channel

(requires Adobe Flash plugin… click HERE to watch it on YouTube)