There I Was...having the dubious distinction of being a crewmember aboard the first SH-60F Class A mishap. It was a long chain of events leading up to it, but we wound up augering in on the runway at Imperial Beach when we had the high-side failure. We were attached to HS-4/CVW-15. I had only recently completed my conversion training from the H-2 and had barely 125 or so hours TT in the H-60. Fortunately, no was killed, however, Dave Rogers was medically retired because he lost his vision in one of his eyes. He was a rather short fellow and when his seat stroked, his face went right into the cyclic (A well known problem with the H-60 that also resulted in the death of another pilot in an SH-60B Lt. Tom House).

My first instinct was to just go sit in the rescue seat next to the cargo door, but we were trained to get into our crashworthy seats in an emergency if time permitted and at that point we certainly had time, because we were climbing like the proverbial "Bat-out-of-hell" to keep the Nr under control.

Lessons Learned:
Had I strapped into the troop seat I would have probably suffered major injuries or worse. The impact was in excess of 30G's and the SONAR xducer was right where the remains of the mangled troop seat were! In all the confusion of egress, I noticed it out of the corner of my eye.

Fly safe and come back dry
Scott Fitzpatrick
AW