Commander Charles T. Frohne, Jr. Story July 29, 1960 Thanks to Tom Frohne and
Michael Barnette
The Douglas A-3 Skywarrior, the largest carrier-based aircraft in U.S.
Navy inventory and nicknamed the “Whale,” was designed as a strategic bomber
and attack aircraft, and also served as a tanker aircraft. The A3D-2P was a
specialized photographic reconnaissance version of the A3D-2 Skywarrior.
At 5:40 p.m. (EST) on July 29, 1960, Commander
Charles T. Frohne, Jr., along with Lieutenant Junior Grade R.B. Paganessi
and Photographer’s Mate R.V. Schomer, were participating in refresher
carrier landings in preparation for night carrier qualifications on the USS
SARATOGA off the Florida coast. Commander Frohne was the commanding officer
of VAP-62, based out of Jacksonville. On their first landing, their
Skywarrior touched down and caught the #6 wire and proceeded to run down the
deck for 155 feet in an apparent normal arrestment. At this point, the
aircraft’s tail hook point failed, however, and the Skywarrior continued
down the angled deck without hopes of capture. As the aircraft approached
the deck edge, Commander Frohne added full power. Unfortunately, it was a
futile effort as the large aircraft lumbered off the carrier, its right wing
striking the catwalk as it cleared the SARATOGA’s deck. Simultaneously, the
crew proceeded to retract the landing gear and attempt a successful bolter,
but the timing of the tail hook failure robbed the aircraft of sufficient
forward speed. The Skywarrior hit the water, its nose breaking off
completely aft of the ventral escape hatch. The aircraft initially stayed
afloat, and the rescue destroyer ALLEN M. SUMNER (DD-692) steamed into
position. Schomer popped to the surface, his life vest inflated, but he was
still strapped in his seat and tangled in parachute rigging. The SUMNER’s
rescue swimmer, Lieutenant Junior Grade Painter leapt overboard and
attempted to cut Schomer free. As the Skywarrior sank, Painter was pulled
under twice as he struggled to rescue Schomer. Tragically, he was unable to
cut Schomer loose and Schomer was carried to the bottom entangled in
wreckage. Commander Frohne and Lieutenant Junior Grade Paganessi were also
killed in the crash.
The wreck, locally known as the “Chinaman Wreck,” was first located by
New Smyrna Beach commercial fisherman Jimmy Chang in the late 1960s.
Available information, including recovered aluminum wreckage in fishing
gear, indicated the wreck may be that of an aircraft. AUE dived the mystery
wreck in July 2014 and found the inverted but largely intact remains of a
Douglas Skywarrior in 230 feet of water. AUE, working with Roy Stafford
(Black Shadow Aviation, USN retired), the A-3 Skywarrior Association, and
the Naval History and Heritage Command, identified the wreck as BuNo 144845
based on location, aircraft type (reconnaissance model), and damage, all of
which was consistent with Commander Frohne’s aircraft, as well as lack of
other A3D-2P Skywarrior losses in the area.
Footage of the July 29, 1960, crash from USS SARATOGA can be viewed
online at
http://youtu.be/rjKN71t8_ts This incident reinforces the dangerous job our uniformed services
accept everyday, regardless if they are in a foreign war zone or simply
conducting basic training at home. The family of Commander Frohne have
graciously shared the attached images, one of which depicts Commander Frohne
(a veteran of World War II) in the pilot's seat of his Skywarrior aircraft
in 1960.
The following piece was reported in the Florida Times-Union on July 22, 2020
Cmdr. Charles T. Frohne Jr., based out of Naval Air Station Jacksonville, was killed along with two crew members on July 29, 1960. The accident happened off the coast of Florida when his plane’s tailhook failed during a landing on the USS Saratoga.
In July 1960, Tom Frohne had turned just 14 and was a few weeks from starting school at Bishop Kenny when a Navy chaplain and an officer showed up on a Friday evening at his family’s house in Riverside.
Tom answered the door. The men asked to speak to his mother, Betty. Tom had grown up in a Navy family, so he knew what this all meant.
On July 29, almost 60 years ago, he was piloting a plane in a training mission off the coast of North Florida. It touched down on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and was caught by a wire on the carrier, as planned. But then the tailhook of the plane failed, coming apart.
There is black-and-white footage that was taken of the accident, and in it one can see Frohne’s plane, an A3D-2P Skywarrior, slide off the carrier and into the sea.
The big plane was going too fast to stop, too slow to take off again.
A Navy rescue swimmer tried to save the men aboard the plane, but it was too late. The nose of the plane had broken off, and the bodies of Frohne and crew members Roger B. Paganessi and Raymond V. Schomer were never recovered.
The wreckage of the plane wasn’t identified until July 2014, 54 years after it sank. Divers from the Association of Underwater Explorers found it upside down but largely intact, in 230 feet of water off of Daytona Beach.
Frohne was 42 when he died, the “old man,” his son said, as commanding officer of VAP-62, a photo reconnaissance squadron based at Naval Air Station Jacksonville.
His son, who lives in Atlantic Beach, said he’s received emails, all these years later, from men who served with him.
“He was really well-liked you know,” Frohne said. “If you were a golfer, he was the kind of guy you’d want to play golf with. I get emails from guys who were in his squadron; they were 17, 18 years old then. They said, ‘Your dad spent two or three hours talking with us, finding out our backgrounds, where we were from.’”
Charles and Betty Frohne met when he was 12 and she was 14. Her parents owned a house in Brooklyn, N.Y. Their family lived on the first floor, the Frohne family rented the second, and the third floor was where the kids did their homework.
She was devastated by the news of her husband’s death. “She had pretty much a complete breakdown, and my grandparents came here, took care of us for a while,” Frohne said. “But then she just sort of jumped back in and bought a house in Venetia where we had friends.”
She was in her 40s with four children when her husband died. She lived to be 87 and never remarried.
Charles Frohne, the son of a firefighter, was bright and skipped two grades. In 1938 he graduated from Fordham University with a double major in mathematics and physics. He joined the Navy in 1941 as an aviation cadet and was commissioned in 1942 at NAS Jacksonville, the same year he and Betty were married.
He flew 165 missions in the Pacific during World War II, seeing action at Wake Island, Tinian and Iwo Jima, but you wouldn’t know it from what he told his children.
“Not at all. Not a bit,” Tom Frohne said. “We were too busy talking baseball or football.”
He traveled across the world during his Navy career, which encompassed numerous international postings.
One of his crew members contacted him not too long ago wanting to tell him how his father had saved his young life years before. It had been near Christmas and the crew had stuffed the bomb bay full of presents as they flew home from Morocco. Halfway to the Azores, the plane lost power to an engine and his father tried to keep it airborne.
The young man nervously asked if they should jettison the presents to reduce weight. Frohne turned to him and said, “Son, the stuff in this bomb bay is worth more than the plane. We’re making it.”
They did make it, landing safely in the Azores.
At 14, after answering the door to the Navy chaplain and officer, Tom Frohne went on to Bishop Kenny. He was angry, he said, though he was helped greatly by some mentors at the school, including coaches.
“I took a lot of my hostility out on the football field, which they liked,” he said.
But how was he able to deal with his father’s death?
“How do you possibly deal with it?” he said. “You just don’t. Things ... ”
He paused. “Just different times.”
He grew up to become a Navy pilot, like his father. His brother, Michael, who lives in Connecticut, is also a pilot — he and a friend are on the cover of a recent Vintage Airplane magazine, pictured in a restored Tiger Moth biplane.
Tom Frohne joined the Navy in 1968 and was on active duty five years, including time in a photo reconnaissance plane that flew over Vietnam, sometimes as low as 200 feet.
“All I was doing was trying to get home alive,” he said. But then he admitted, “That was a lot of fun, when you’re young and stupid enough.”
