Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 24, 1993                   TAG: 9307240185
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: LON WAGNER and CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: PAINT BANK                                LENGTH: Medium

NAVY JET GOES DOWN IN CRAIG COUNTY; CREW DEAD

It was about 10:30 a.m. Friday when Dennis Smith and his wife heard the Navy jet crash into Middle Mountain.

"I just heard bzzzzt - pow," Smith said. "It didn't sound like dynamite or anything, just pow. I seen a ball of fire, and I said, `Woman, come here, look at this.' "

It would take Smith and rescue workers three hours to reach the wreckage of the Navy's A-6 Intruder and find the bodies of its pilot and co-pilot.

"It's a long ways from nowhere up there," said local resident Curtis Linton of the crash site's location.

The crew was dispatched from Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. The pilot was identified as Lt. Paul Alfred Ambrogi, 26, a native of Richmond and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy. The bomber/navigator was Lt. Joseph Kendall Rough, 28, from Wilmington, N.C., a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The men were practicing low-level maneuvering when the plane crashed in the Shawvers Run Wilderness Area in Jefferson National Forest, said Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Wensing, a Navy spokesman.

Craig County residents say they routinely see and hear military planes buzzing over the mountain ridges and through the valleys during training missions.

"One night they came by so low you could see them out the front window," said local resident Perry Vail, shaking his head and looking at the billow of smoke on top of the mountain.

While Smith was leading rescue workers through the thickly wooded area, West Virginia pilot Mike Thomas spotted the crash from the air. Thomas said he saw puffs of smoke rising from several spots on the north side of the mountain, a few miles from Paint Bank just off Virginia 18.

The Navy was uncertain what caused the crash. But Friday wasn't the first time Craig County's peaks have snagged an aircraft.

Three Army pilots were killed in 1943 when their plane flew into Potts Mountain, which lies just south of Middle Mountain. And World War II hero Audie Murphy died in 1971 when his plane crashed into Brushy Mountain.

Middle Mountain, like other mountains in Craig County, rises well above 3,000 feet. The sky was murky with haze Friday morning.

Wreckage from the Intruder, a Vietnam-era bomber considered the "workhorse of the Navy," scattered across the mountain ridge and sparked several small fires.

Smith said the rescue team first came across smashed pieces of the jet's control panel. Then they found an opened orange parachute and a crewman's body.

Smith, 47, from nearby New Castle, was shaken by what he saw at the crash site. He later refused to go back up on the mountain.

"He didn't look like a person," Smith said of finding the body. "He just didn't look like a person. It just tears you up."

Keywords:
FATALITY