| Date: 23 March 1972 |
| Aircraft type: A-7E Corsair |
| Serial Number: 157520 |
| Military Unit: VA-192 |
| Service: USN |
| Home Base: USS Kitty Hawk |
| Name(s): |
| Lt Dennis Stanley Pike (KWF) |
| The fourth Corsair lost by the Kitty Hawk during March crashed due to an engine malfunction. A flight of A-7s was sent on a close air support mission just south of the DMZ. Cdr Robert Taylor, the CO of VA-192 later recalled the mission: "We were on a mission just south of the DMZ," remembers Taylor. “Government forces were being overrun by the Viet Cong, and a T-28 with an American pilot and Vietnamese observer also went down. We were on target about forty minutes and finally had to leave. I watched Pike disappear on the way out, and that scene, those 10 or 15 seconds, are embedded in my mind, lived over and over. I was about a mile-and-a-half behind him, saw the smoke come out of his tailpipe and called him up asking if there were any problems. He replied, 'Yeah, I've got some oil pressure problems.' We were only about twenty miles inside of Laos, and I told him to take a heading toward Da Nang. He rolled out and made the turn from southwest all the way around to the east at five thousand feet. I told him, 'If you pass three thousand feet and don't have anything left, then [get] out.' He replied, 'Roger that,' followed by an 'Uh oh, there goes the engine. Well, see you guys later."
Cdr Taylor saw Lt Pike eject but the parachute did not deploy and Lt Pike, veteran of about 175 combat missions, was killed. Following the loss of Lt Pike’s aircraft (call sign Jury 307) and another Corsair on the 19th the aircraft was briefly grounded for investigations into the engine. The problem was thought to involve failure of the Allison TF41 engine spacers. However, although evidence was scanty, it was also suggested that the two aircraft may have been lost through foreign object damage causing the engines to break up. |
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