Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 23, 1990 TAG: 9007230121
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A/3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
On Thursday an F-14 provided some man-made thunder, taking a quick peek at our modest airstrips.
All of which reminds us that in April an F-15 visited Roanoke, prompting thousands of cheers, a couple of grumpy complaints and an official protest from our airport commission.
The Air Force was placed on the commission's official doo-doo list, and for a couple of tense months there, we were all in jeopardy of being bombed into a gaping, smoking crater by a fleet of night-flying Stealth C-130 HoverCraft things. At night.
Of course, the crater would have had a nice, level, baked surface, and there are some Roanoke Valley economic-development specialists who actually like the idea of heavy air strikes to clear land for light industry.
More jobs, fewer people and - BINGO - you have quite the humming little local economy.
The offending F-15, which actually was an F-15E, was traced to the Seymore Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro, N.C., about 250 air miles south of Big Lick.
Jacqueline Shuck, our airport director, wrote to Otto Keesling of the Federal Aviation Administration down that way.
Keesling, you'll recall, is the Jefferson High School alumnus who now works for the FAA 250 air miles south of here. Maybe you don't recall it, but now you know it.
It isn't the F-15E visit that irked us, wrote Shuck in more flowery words than these; it was the durned afterburner, which made some Northwest Roanoke neighborhoods feel as if they were being roasted alive. That's what bothered us.
Keesling investigates the incident. First of all, an F-15E is for dropping bombs on specific targets - (Keesling, in his indomitable way, says it best: "The Gadhafi-type thing - go in, put a bomb in your back door and get out."). That's the jet that lit up Roanoke in April.
The F-15C, which flies out of Langley Air Force Base in Tidewater, is for dogfights and boring stuff like that.
Yes, admits a Seymore Johnson Air Force Base spokesman, we frequently fly past Roanoke and over the Shenandoah Valley on training missions.
And yes, we were practicing instrument approaches on your Roanoke runways on the date in question.
And yes, the young Air Force pilot asked permission of the Roanoke control tower to climb rather steeply and the controllers agreed.
And yes, the pilot squirted some more fuel into the tailpipes, which is called, in Air Force lingo, lighting the afterburners, and the F-15E disappeared, last seen headed toward heaven.
"It's like a huge blowtorch," said Otto Keesling.
But, he adds, "He didn't do anything illegal; it was just poor judgment."
So the Air Force apologized.
"They were sorry it happened, and they guaranteed it won't happen again," said Keesling.
Shuck is satisfied.
by CNB