2nd Navy Jet Falls Into Red Sea from Truman Aircraft Carrier

A Navy fighter jet failed to land on an aircraft carrier and plummeted into the Red Sea on Tuesday, marking the fourth major mishap involving the vessel and the third loss of a fighter jet deployed with it since the warship left home last year.

The F/A-18F Super Hornet jet, worth about $67 million, went overboard after an unsuccessful attempt to slow it down upon landing on the USS Harry S. Truman, the Navy said in a statement. Both aviators aboard the jet safely ejected and were rescued at sea by helicopter with minor injuries, and no one aboard the warship’s flight deck was harmed, the service said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Sean Parnell, said in a statement late Tuesday that the Defense Department is monitoring the situation, and that the jet was not struck by the Houthis, a militant group that has launched drones and missiles at U.S. forces in the Middle East for more than a year. An investigation is underway, and more information will be disclosed when the cause of the accident is identified, he said.

The latest incident, reported earlier by CNN, followed the loss of another jet, an F/A-18E, in an accident aboard the Truman last week in which the aircraft tumbled overboard after sailors aboard lost control of it while towing it in the ship’s hangar bay. A third fighter jet from the Truman was shot down accidentally over the Red Sea in December by another Navy warship, the USS Gettysburg, in an incident that triggered concerns about communication among warships and fighter jets in the region.

The Truman also was involved in a collision in the Mediterranean Sea in February, prompting the service to fire its commanding officer, Navy Capt. Dave Snowden. He was replaced by Navy Capt. Christopher Hill, who had just completed the deployment of another carrier, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

While the incidents have not killed any service members, they have raised questions about the strain placed on the aircraft carrier’s crew and its ability to carry out a grueling deployment in which troops have clashed for months with Houthi militants in Yemen. The mishaps have the attention of senior U.S. military leaders, a defense official familiar with the discussion said Tuesday night, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has twice extended the aircraft carrier’s deployment since it left its home in Virginia last September, most recently last week, to ensure that the Navy had two aircraft carriers on hand to battle the Houthis. Since March, the carrier has been on the front lines of a full-scale assault that President Donald Trump ordered against the Yemen-based militant group in response to its attacks on commercial and military vessels dating to late 2023.

The Biden administration began launching strikes against the militants early in 2024 after the group refused to stop waging attacks. The Trump administration has cast that effort as weak and said it wanted to be more aggressive. It has hit more than 1,000 Houthi targets in Yemen in less than two months, defense officials have said.

Trump administration officials have touted the strike campaign as a success story, while releasing few details about it. On Tuesday, Trump said he was calling off the strikes after the Houthis promised to stop attacking ships. Administration officials linked the decision to an announcement by Omani officials that a ceasefire had been reached.

Investigations of the fighter jet shoot-down and the ship collision are under review by senior defense officials, meaning the results could be released soon, the defense official said Tuesday. The two more recent mishaps involving the fighter jets also will be scrutinized, he said.

Another aircraft carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, deployed from San Diego in November. It has been at sea in the region for a couple of weeks, mostly holding in the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea, defense officials have said.