THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 25, 1996 TAG: 9602250055
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A4 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
The Navy will put its F-14 Tomcat fighter jets back in service beginning today but is ordering pilots to fly slow and keep their afterburners turned off at low altitudes while it continues to search for the cause of three recent accidents.
The service announced Saturday that it's also requiring all F-14 crews to complete a one-day regimen of ``refresher training'' before returning to the air. Courses will cover such topics as ``out-of-control/spin procedures,'' ``crew coordination'' and the ``ejection decision process.''
The orders by Adm. Mike Boorda, the chief of naval operations, were considered ``the prudent thing to do until we have more answers'' about the crashes, said Cmdr. Stephen Pietropaoli, a Navy spokesman.
The restrictions will:
Keep all F-14s at subsonic speeds - less than 550 knots - when flying below 10,000 feet.
Limit some F-14Ds, the newest models, to subsonic speeds when they're below 17,000 feet. That additional restriction will apply to planes equipped with ``Phoenix fairings,'' wedge-shaped pieces of metal attached to the F-14's wings to reduce the aerodynamic drag of Phoenix missiles carried below. The fairings have a small effect on the Tomcat's performance, one veteran operator said Saturday.
Bar pilots of all F-14Bs and F-14Ds - which have newer, higher-performing engines than the original F-14As - from lighting their afterburners when lower than 10,000 feet.
Capt. Tom Enright of Virginia Beach, a former F-14 radar intercept officer and squadron commander, said the restrictions will keep the planes out of situations where past accidents have occurred. ``We haven't seen any significant numbers of incidents outside those envelopes,'' he explained.
Enright - whose current assignment is executive assistant to Vice Adm. Richard C. Allen, commander of the Navy's Atlantic Air Forces - said F-14 crews deployed around the world probably began getting the refresher training on Saturday. Those at home should get the training today and Monday.
Enright described the training as ``academic, book-learning kinds of things'' as opposed to exercises in the air. It will involve a review of skills that pilots and radar intercept officers already have acquired ``so we can make sure that everybody understands our standard operating procedures,'' he said.
Pietropaoli said the crews of deployed F-14s will be free to ignore the restrictions if they become involved in combat. Two carriers, the Norfolk-based George Washington and the San Diego-based Nimitz, are operating close to potential combat zones. The George Washington is in the Adriatic Sea off Bosnia; the Nimitz is in the Persian Gulf.
All 337 F-14s have been under a ``stand down'' since Thursday, when a Tomcat from the Nimitz crashed in the gulf. Both crewmen were rescued. The two other recent accidents, a Jan. 28 crash near Nashville and an accident last Sunday in the Pacific, resulted in fatalities.
A review team of Navy safety experts, senior aviators, and industry representatives spent the stand down reviewing what is known about the accidents and about the F-14's performance generally, but Pietropaoli said they found no link between the accidents.
Six independent teams of investigators continue to study the cases, however. Those inquiries often take months to complete, but Pietropaoli said Navy officials would monitor their progress for anything that might indicate a problem common to all three crashes.
The accidents occurred under dramatically different circumstances. The Nashville accident occurred just after takeoff from the city's airport. Witnesses said the plane climbed out nearly vertically, its afterburners lit, in a spectacular maneuver that the pilot had permission to perform. When the plane crashed, the crew and three civilians died.
In the crash off San Diego, the lost jet was flying level and at high speed only a few hundred feet from the water. The plane was taking part in an exercise in which it is supposed to mimic the performance of an enemy missile; the drill allows sailors on nearby ships to practice skills they would need to track and shoot down a real threat. Both crew members were killed.
Pietropaoli said the service will attempt to salvage the wreckage of the plane, an F-14D that is believed to be in about 1,800 feet of water roughly 120 miles west of San Diego. The ``D'' model is the newest and considered the safest in the F-14 line; the Nashville and Persian Gulf crashes involved older F-14As, which have engines that some pilots have complained are too weak for such a high-performance aircraft.
The plane involved in Thursday's crash in the Persian Gulf was flying higher and slower than the other two downed F-14s, the Navy has indicated. It was on a routine flight to check its performance after undergoing maintenance.
All three Tomcats crashed recently were based at Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego. More than half of the Navy's Tomcats operate out of Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach, however, and the rest are scheduled to be reassigned there by next year.
The Navy is phasing out the Tomcat, considered its premier aerial dogfighter, in favor of the smaller, lighter but more versatile F/A-18 Hornet. All F-14As are to be retired by 2004, and all B's and D's are expected to be out of service by 2010. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
TOMCAT CREWS MUST:
Take a one-day ``refresher training'' before flying again.
Keep all F-14s at subsonic speeds when flying below 10,000 feet.
Limit some F-14Ds, the newest models, to subsonic speeds when
they're below 17,000 feet.
Bar pilots of all F-14Bs and F-14Ds - with higher-performing
engines than the original F-14As - from lighting their afterburners
when lower than 10,000 feet.
by CNB