THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411060191
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KERRY DEROCHI, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 368 lines
On a humid night in September, as a thin haze settled on the pine forest around Oceana, Lt. Karl Belczyk strapped himself into the front seat of his F-14 Tomcat.
He sank into the cramped cockpit, as he had hundreds of times before, and stared at the glaring console. He waited for the canopy to close, waited for the quiet that would follow.
Around him, the airfield was hopping. Pairs of jets roared on nearby runways and taxied along the flight lines, guided by plane captains waving wands of white light.
It was a good night to be a Navy pilot. A fun night. The energy was high.
Karl checked the Tomcat's engines and prepared to take off. The mission was supposed to be simple - a two-hour hop off the coast of North Carolina.
His job was to protect the Eisenhower battle group by flying patrol at 20,000 feet. As flying goes, it was an easy assignment, even boring. Circle after circle after circle. Drilling holes in the sky.
A mechanic signaled Karl to hold up: There had been a last-minute snag in the schedule. Karl grinned and nodded. He was used to waiting.
Just three days before, he had been snatched from crucial fleet exercises on the Dwight D. Eisenhower so that the carrier could go to Haiti. The entire air wing now operated out of Oceana Naval Air Station. The exercises were proceeding on schedule, as if the jets were still on the boat. But no one knew whether the Haiti crisis would delay the upcoming Mediterranean deployment.
Karl hoped it wouldn't. It was his first sea tour as a pilot. He deployed before as the back-seat guy, the radar intercept officer. Now, it was his job to hurl the jet off the carrier's flight deck. Now, it was his job to bring it all back safely.
Karl, 32, knew he was ready. Six weeks earlier, he'd been selected as a lieutenant commander and was picked as a department head. His career was on the fast track. One day, if he wanted, he'd probably be the head of a squadron. He would be a skipper.
Karl Belczyk was flying high.
``This guy was always up,'' said Cmdr. Cary Silvers, Karl's executive officer. ``He used up so much energy in his life, it was almost like someone, somewhere knew he had to cram everything in a short amount of time.''
Karl took his place at the head of the runway and checked with the RIO behind him, Lt. j.g. Marcus Pletcher. It was time to concentrate on the job at hand.
Focus.
Focus.
Compartmentalize.
It's what pilots are trained to do. It's what keeps them in the air.
Shortly after 9 p.m., Karl was cleared to leave Oceana. He taxied and pulled back on the stick.
The F-14 lifted above the pines.
As the Tomcat banked and headed south, Karl's fiance, Stacy Goforth, stood with a film crew on a production site in Portsmouth.
The commercial shoot had taken longer than expected. She had told Karl she'd be home at 9 p.m. She had suggested they go to a movie.
The two hadn't seen much of each other the past few days. She worked during the day as a producer for a local advertising agency. He flew at night.
On the morning of Sept. 14, she'd left without waking him. She'd stopped in the door of the bedroom and looked at him curled on the bed.
She didn't know it would be for the last time.
The two had been together since 1991, when they met at a party in Meridian, Miss. - her hometown. She had just graduated from college. He was training to be a Navy pilot.
``I haven't found a job,'' she wrote in her diary that night. ``But I have found a man.''
They had the same interests. Both were athletic and liked to take long, winding bicycle treks. They loved the water. He took her scuba diving.
When Karl moved to Virginia Beach to enter the F-14 program, Stacy followed. They set up house in a three-bedroom brick home at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront.
Stacy started a flower garden. Karl planted blueberries.
Each Saturday, they stood in the front yard, raking the mounds of pine straw that covered the grass. Karl worked on his convertible, a 1966 Chevrolet Super Sport Impala.
``He had this energy that I was drawn to,'' Stacy said. ``I wanted to be around someone who loved life like he did. That's how I wanted to live my life, with the same energy, the same passion, the same excitement.''
At 8 a.m. on March 6, 1993, in a park near Oceana, Karl asked Stacy to marry him. He was on his way to sea for a month. He wanted her to take his ring and think about it while he was gone. He was crying.
The two planned to get married in September 1993 in Virginia Beach. They would honeymoon in Australia.
But the Navy changed those plans. Karl's squadron, the Bedevilers of VF-74, was scheduled to be decommissioned as part of the cut in Navy forces. The Navy told Karl he might have to go to sea that winter on the carrier Saratoga.
The wedding was put off a year, until September 1994. Stacy bought a dress. They booked the Norfolk Botanical Garden.
But Karl didn't go to sea on the Saratoga. Instead, he was assigned to the Swordsmen of VF-32, who were scheduled to deploy with the Eisenhower in October 1994.
Again, the wedding was put off. With the intense work-ups that came before a six-month cruise, they figured there wouldn't be time.
They were right. This past summer, Karl was gone for weeks, flying exercises in Nevada and the Caribbean.
He was back long enough for the two to take a bicycle vacation in Rhode Island and to attend a close friend's wedding. He was a groomsman. She was the maid of honor.
It was a trial run, they joked.
One night in August, Karl sat at home, flipping through a stack of photographs when he accidentally saw a picture of Stacy in her wedding dress. Later, he confessed to what he had done.
``I can't wait to see it for real,'' he told Stacy.
At 9:30 p.m., Karl and Marc Pletcher neared Cherry Point, N.C., where they would turn and head out to sea to reach the Ike battle group.
It was the final work-up before cruise, a sort of graduation exercise. The pressure was on.
With the Ike in Haiti, the fliers were operating out of Oceana, instead of off the carrier. That meant an extra half-hour with each sortie.
Karl had already flown once that day, a routine training hop off the shore of Virginia Beach. He was used to the fast-paced schedule. He didn't complain.
``Karl was a very realistic person; he faced reality every day,'' Stacy said. ``To him, flying wasn't about emotions. To him, flying was doing his job - being an F-14 pilot and all that associated with that.''
Karl wanted to be the best. He always had.
He'd grown up in a suburb of Philadelphia, the only son of two school teachers. They lived in a skinny, brick row house on the corners of Andrew and Jackson streets. Karl was the middle child and spent his youth as the smiling, mischievous buffer between his two sisters.
Karl thrived on competition. At age 8, he raced his father on bikes, pumping the pedals so hard the bicycle fell apart under him. A few years later, when they were looking for small fish in a Florida waterway, Karl hooked a 4-foot-long tarpon. Triumphant, he handed the pole to his dad to reel it in.
In 1980, Karl went to the University of Virginia. There, in the rolling hills and fields of Charlottesville, he studied chemical engineering and pledged the Phi Delta Gamma fraternity, the FIJIs. He enrolled in the Navy ROTC program to pay for the tuition.
``He knew what he had to do to get things done,'' said his mother, Joan Belczyk. ``Whatever he pursued, it just fell into line for him. He worked hard. His goals were attained.''
At U.Va., Karl was selected battalion commander, the highest honor given an ROTC student. During the year of his command, he held rigid high standards, but wore Blues Brothers sunglasses to ROTC functions. He invited even the youngest midshipmen to the FIJI house for parties.
When he graduated in December 1984, he chose aviation as his career.
``Karl was an elite person,'' said Chris Burke, who served in ROTC as Karl's executive officer. ``Everything he did was the best. He wasn't going to be a surface warfare guy or a sub guy when the best at the time was an F-14.''
Karl was sent to Pensacola, the home of naval aviation - a place where lifelong friendships are formed in a cockpit of a trainer or over a pitcher of beer at the bars near University Mall.
It was in Pensacola that Karl flunked his first test. He was told his 20-20 vision wasn't good enough to fly. He couldn't be a pilot. He'd have to be a naval flight officer. He'd have to sit in the back.
Karl earned his wings in April 1986, in a ceremony at the Museum of Naval Aviation in Pensacola. He was the honorman, the top of his class.
He chose F-14s and was sent to the training squadron at Oceana to learn how to be a radar intercept officer. He deployed to the Mediterranean for six months, writing letters home from exotic ports, with photographs of white sand beaches and ancient stone ruins.
``He was a little bit like the kind of guy I wanted to be - a little more fancy-free,'' said Lt. Dave Kahn, one of Karl's squadron mates. ``This is the kind of guy I wanted to hang out with. The more I got to know him, this was the guy I wanted to be best friends with.''
Karl returned to Virginia Beach that fall. The next year, he rented a house on 60th Street with a group of Navy fliers. One of them was Lt. Steven Snyder, who would become Karl's best friend.
The two were known for their toga parties and blender drinks, for bike races through Seashore State Park and for catamaran trips that took 4 1/2 hours when they should have taken one.
They were known for their love of flying.
In late 1988, the Navy sent Karl to Top Gun, the Navy's elite fighter pilot school.
That same year, Karl heard a rumor that the Navy would allow some RIO's to transition into pilots, what fliers called retreading. He quickly applied and was accepted, transferring to school in Pensacola. Before he left, he took off his squadron patches and the Top Gun logo. It was a fresh start.
``He really always wanted to be in command,'' said Burke. ``He joked a little about letting someone else fly him around. He really wanted to be the pilot.
``I don't think it was a love for the sky. I think it was a vision. This was the most personally challenging. This was the elite.''
At 9:45 p.m. on Sept. 14, Karl and a second jet from his squadron were on station, patrolling the skies above the battle group.
They were flying about 800 feet apart in what Navy pilots call a combat spread formation. The other jet was the lead. Karl was the wingman.
Their mission that night was to provide defensive counter air patrol, or DCA. It was being controlled by an E-2C Hawkeye, a radar plane, flying with them.
It was a beautiful night with a large moon, the kind of night Karl would have liked to describe to Stacy, the kind of night that made him love to fly. At 20,000 feet, there was no haze. The jet sliced through the air at 400 mph.
``At night, you see an unbelievable amount of stars,'' said Snyder, who flew in the A-6 Intruder. ``You just see this amazing beauty. At night, it is quiet. It's calm. It's very secure.''
Like all pilots, Karl had learned to accept the dangers of flying. Even on a cloudless night.
Vertigo can strike at any time. The horizon disappears as the dark ocean blends with the black sky. On the carrier, night landings are the most harrowing, forcing pilots to land on a pitching deck with only the lights of the landing strip to guide them.
In darkness, death feels close at hand.
``Night flying can be scary,'' said Kahn, an F-14 flier. ``It can be beautiful. Your perceptions change at night. They take away your horizon. . . on instruments.''
Karl knew the risks. In the past three years, 80 Navy fliers have died in crashes, at least 27 of them from Hampton Roads. The losses have been mourned and then absorbed by the aviation community.
But the jets have to fly.
``I think Karl was more afraid of not doing his job well than of getting killed,'' said Burke. ``I think his fears were not living up to his own high standards, not of death. I think he felt flying was not something to be afraid of. He respected it. He was serious about it.''
That he understood those risks was evident last July when Karl wrote a last will and testament, because of the upcoming deployment. Marc Pletcher, the squadron's legal officer, signed it. Pletcher, 25, was also the RIO Karl would fly with that September night.
Karl sat down with Stacy and explained what would happen should his plane go down.
``He never thought about how it would affect him,'' Stacy said. ``He was much more concerned about how I would be taken care of, how his family would be taken care of.
``I don't think death was an issue for Karl. I think it was what he would leave behind.''
Karl rarely spoke of fear. To him, death was part of the job. You roll the dice, he'd say. You take a chance.
A few minutes before 10 p.m., about 21,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, Karl started to close the gap between the two F-14s.
The pair had been flying patrol for 20 minutes, circling their station again and again.
As the wingman, Karl positioned his jet 800 feet behind the lead plane. He decided to come in closer, cutting the distance in a matter of seconds.
It was a routine maneuver, one he had completed often. But something, this night, was off.
And, at 400 mph, one inch can spell disaster.
Karl slammed into the lead jet's left engine.
The other fliers felt only a thump. Then, nothing.
The crew of the second jet, whose names have been protected by the Navy, tried to raise Karl on the radio. There was no answer. They listened for the beep of the homing device that would indicate Karl and Marc had ejected. There was nothing.
Silence.
In a world filled with the roars of engines, the static of radio dispatches and the slam of jets on a carrier flight deck, silence is disturbing.
Silence is deadly.
Lt. Eric Pfister sat in an F-14 on the Oceana runway when the call came in to return to the flight line. All flights were canceled.
Pfister headed into the squadron's ready room to find out what happened. There'd been a mid-air collision, he was told as he walked into the offices.
The other plane had made it back safely to the Marine Corps Air Station at Cherry Point. Karl and Marc Pletcher were missing.
For Pfister, it was devastating news. He was the RIO who normally flew with Karl. He could have - should have - been on that flight. Instead, he had sat at his desk, making the squadron's schedule. Pletcher had taken his place.
It would be five days before Pfister could bring himself to climb into a plane.
By 10:30 p.m., the squadron room was buzzing. A massive search and rescue effort was under way. The drill of paperwork had started. The fliers relied on instinct.
Focus.
Focus.
Compartmentalize.
At 10:16 p.m., Joan Belczyk called Karl's house in Virginia Beach. She had heard a news report that the Eisenhower was in Haiti. She wanted to know if Karl was on it. No one answered.
A few minutes later, Stacy got home. There was a message on the machine from Karl. He had an extra flight, he explained. They wouldn't be able to have dinner or catch a movie. He would be home at 1 a.m. He'd see her tomorrow.
It was just as well. Stacy was tired. She ate dinner and went to sleep.
On the way to the bedroom, she passed the card Karl had given her the week before when he'd left for the work-ups. Inside, was printed, ``I never was very good at saying good-bye.''
At 1:30 a.m., Cmdr. Al Myers, the squadron's commanding officer, knocked on Stacy's front door.
With one look, Stacy knew. She asked Myers to call Snyder, Karl's best friend.
Snyder was half asleep when he heard Myers' voice. He curled into a ball on the bed.
``He said there's been an accident,'' Snyder recalled. ``As soon as he said that, I knew. It became crystal clear. He proceeded to tell me it was Karl.''
He walked to the shower and started crying. On the way back to the bedroom, he collapsed on the floor.
``I remember saying, `Not Karl, it just can't be Karl,' '' Snyder said. ``At that time, it hit me very strongly, I had probably lost my best friend.''
Snyder and his wife, Beth, stayed the night with Stacy. They sat huddled in the living room of the small Oceanfront house, waiting. Beth prayed. Stacy got out the photos of the wedding dress. They thought somehow that Karl would be found.
At 6 a.m., they started making phone calls.
The day wore on, hour after hour, and still there was no word.
The VF-32 Swordsmen gathered in the ready room on the top floor of their hangar at Oceana. No jets would fly that day.
``What I figured was, they'd find him in the morning,'' said Lt. Marty Robbins, a RIO. ``I figured they'd find both of them together and Karl, somehow, would take care of both of them.''
The fliers wondered why.
It was peacetime. Karl was in a routine pattern. This wasn't a landing on a carrier. This wasn't supposed to happen.
``It's an unforgiving business,'' said Silvers, the squadron's executive officer.
Al and Joan Belczyk arrived in Virginia Beach, hoping to find solace in the home their son had loved.
One hour later, Myers, the skipper, walked in. He told them the search had been called off. He told them he had declared Karl dead, though nothing had been found.
The spot where Karl's plane had gone down was 40 miles southeast of Cape Hatteras, where the Atlantic dropped into darkness.
At 2 p.m. on Sept. 19, Myers gave a eulogy at a memorial service in the Oceana chapel. He spoke of the need to go on.
The jets have to fly. And pilots have to fly them.
``You can't run away from the squadron,'' he said later in an interview. ``You can't shut down for two weeks.
``I think everyone walked out of that service proud, proud to be associated with this outfit, proud of the kind of individual Karl was.''
Kahn walked out with a newfound peace, but he still looks down at the ocean when he's up in an F-14.
``I know he's not there, but I think I'll always look down and go, `Maybe someday,' '' Kahn said. ``I don't know if I want to give that up yet.''
On Sept. 30, in a burial on the grassy slopes of Arlington National Cemetery, Kahn and members of VF-32, stood at attention in dress white uniforms as a sailor played taps for Karl.
Stacy stood with Karl's parents, surrounded by friends. Snyder and Burke were in the front, shoulder to shoulder, staring straight ahead. Tears streamed down their faces as sailors took a flag out of the empty, horse-drawn coffin.
It was hard to look at the flag being folded so neatly and handed so gently to Stacy. It was difficult to listen to the words of a Navy chaplain.
When the service ended, a cool breeze flowed through the cemetery. Suddenly, through a clearing in the trees, four F-14 Tomcats from Karl's squadron came into view. They rose above the crowd in a tight, diamond formation. Slowly, one flew straight up into the sky.
The lost pilot.
``I feel very cheated,'' said Snyder. ``I was counting on there being an Uncle Karl for my kids. I was counting on there being a Karl to run the next triathlon with. I was counting on 20 years from now, there being a Karl so we can do whatever 50-year-old naval aviators do.''
On a recent sunny Sunday afternoon, at the POW/MIA memorial on Oceana Boulevard, Stacy sat alone and talked to Karl. Looking out to the runways he used to fly, she told him, simply, thank you.
``When I think of Karl, I am so full of pride, I'm just so proud of what he did, of what he was,'' she said. ``I don't think Karl had any regrets in his life. I think, as his friends and as his fiance, we should have no regrets about his death, as sad and as tragic as it was.
``He lived his life like he wanted to. I really believe he died with no regrets. We should all be that lucky.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Photos
Lt. Karl Belcyzk in the cockpit, top. At left, Karl and Stacy
Goforth pose for a picture on a skiing trip last winter in Snowshoe,
W. Va. Above, an F-14 Tomcat, the type o fplane that Belcyzk flew.
In death, he was awarded a Navy commendation medal and was frocked
as a lieutenant commander.
Stacy Goforth comforts Al Belcyzk, Karl's father, after a ceremony
at Arlington National Cemetery.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT MILITARY ACCIDENT PLANE
FATALITIES by CNB