I'm sure everyone's seen the one where it breaks with the F/A-18 landing and the leet yellow shirt plays a bit of jump rope with it, but I've stumbled across another that's worth a look-see:


When I saw an E-2 come in to frame I was worried, not too keen to see an arresting cable break while arresting an aircraft without ejection seats, but I (and mostly those guys in the E-2) lucked out. I'm sure the guys who got pelted on the deck had a pretty bad day, but nobody died and they made a hell of an upload for Youtube.

Dayum! I guess that's why they say to be on military for carrier landings...

Yup, the wisdom of pesky established SOPs are never fully appreciated until the exact situation they were designed for presents itself. It is the same in civil aviation, and when they get skipped through complacency after 99 normal ops... well, the theory of Murphy's Law and all that.

I'd seen this video before, as it was out around the same time as the MiL 24 shoot down video, strangely enough on a British newspaper site (huh?). It had the same "pucker" effect for me then watching that Hawkeye going over the edge. Turbo-props tend to be a little bit more immune to spool up delay, as their idles are already pretty high and thrust changes are achieved to a larger extent by prop pitch changes rather than massive rpm changes, but it is nonetheless still present, as having checked it is indeed a single shaft turboprop on the E2.