THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 18, 1996 TAG: 9604180350
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, TOM HOLDEN AND PAUL CLANCY, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Long : 165 lines
An F-14B Tomcat fighter reported trouble on landing then crashed and broke apart at Oceana Naval Air Station Wednesday
It was the Navy's fourth Tomcat crash in three months.
Both crewmen ejected safely, suffering only minor cuts and bruises.
A Navy rescue worker, going to the pilot's aid in a helicopter, suffered a broken ankle while trying to retrieve one of the aviators, whose parachute caught in a tree. The rescue worker apparently fell from the tree.
The twin-engine jet went down while attempting to land at the base, according to the Navy. Some witnesses said the aircraft appeared to lose power, then invert before plowing into woods near the end and off to the side of the runway.
The pilot and radar intercept officer were in good condition, the Navy said. Both underwent tests and observation, one at a clinic on the base and the other at Virginia Beach General Hospital. The injured rescue worker was treated at Virginia Beach General.
The pilot is Lt. Ross Slavin, 31, of Wilmette, Ill., a nine-year Navy veteran. The radar intercept officer is Lt. Dan Kluss, 36, of Clarion, Iowa, an 18-year veteran with prior enlisted service. He is married with two children.
Both are instructors for Fighter Squadron 101, a training squadron for all F-14s.
The rescue worker is 2nd Class Petty Officer Patrick Bussler, attached to the Oceana Search and Rescue Team.
The jet went down about 11:30 a.m. in the southwest section of the base near London Bridge Road. Witnesses saw a canopy fly from the top of the jet, then two parachutes open after the crewmen ejected.
At a construction site for a new Lillian Vernon warehouse on International Parkway, several workers reported seeing the jet in the final seconds before it plunged into the ground.
The plane came in low near the building - much lower than what they considered normal - and then the canopy flew into the air, followed a moment later by the billowing of two parachutes, they said. The plane then inverted and disappeared behind the tree line. A huge gray-and-black cloud erupted into the sky.
``It sounded kind of like a door slamming in an empty building,'' said Kerry Z. Howell, the assistant superintendent for H & M Construction Co.
Howell, a 33-year-old resident of Lynnhaven, was inside a construction trailer when the aircraft crashed but emerged in time to see smoke fill the sky.
Slavin, the pilot, came down in tall trees near a refueling area just off the runway, his orange-and-white parachute still hanging about 50 feet above the ground from a tall tree, fluttering in the wind.
A rescue helicopter from Oceana was sent to search for the men. When the copter crew spotted Slavin and his parachute in the tree, a rescuer apparently climbed from the helicopter into the tree to attempt to retrieve him. It was at that point, said officials, that the rescuer fell to the ground, injuring an ankle.
Kluss, the radar intercept officer, landed on a grassy strip near the stand of trees.
The ejection seats landed about 50 yards apart at the edge of a taxiway.
Craig L. Rollins, a 29-year-old mechanic from Norfolk, credited the pilot for keeping the jet airborne long enough to avoid major catastrophe such as hitting a building or the nearby Lynnhaven Mall.
``They did a great job,'' he said of the crew. ``A lot of people could have been hurt but they kept that plane away from everyone. They deserve a lot of credit for that.''
``The guys did a great job bringing it back to the base,'' a Navy spokesman said.
William H. Elder, a 35-year-old Ocean View resident and a laborer at the site, said he saw the plane emerge just over the corner of the warehouse.
``It was the weirdest sight I ever saw,'' Elder said. ``It came over the building and then it was sideways and then she went down. First time I ever saw something like that.''
Larry D. Dedmon, a mechanic from Ocean View, noted the plane appeared so close to the building that ``it looked like the roofers could have reached up and touched the wheels.''
Dedmon said the plane's approach to Oceana appeared so close that had the pilot failed to keep it airborne as long as he did, the jet might have crashed into the building he was working on.
``It was that close,'' he said.
One roofer, Joseph R. Kelly, a 26-year old resident of Bayview in Norfolk, said the plane turned upside down the moment the pilot and the radio intercept officer ejected. Kelly said he could not remember hearing the jet as it came overhead.
``After I saw them eject, it got real quiet, like they had cut off the engines,'' Kelly said.
The weather was clear with winds of 15 mph to 25 mph and gusty when the plane crashed while returning from a training mission.
A Navy spokesman said the two men were returning from an area south of Raleigh, N.C., on a reconnaissance training mission. After reporting some problems with the aircraft, they were given a go-around by the control tower. The spokesman said they made a left turn away from the runway and could not keep control of the plane and ejected.
There was no indication of any engine malfunction.
``They indicated they had some problems with the aircraft in the landing phase,'' Cmdr. Kevin Wensing, a Navy spokesman, said.
The crash came one day after Navy and Marine Corps officials said they are revamping pilot training and improving equipment on fighter planes because of the recent crashes.
Both crew members in Wednesday's crash were experienced pilots who followed training procedures in such situations, namely making a pass in the landing pattern and ejecting, a spokesman said.
Wensing said an investigation has been launched into the cause of the latest crash.
``We're very fortunate and gratified that the air crew was able to eject safely,'' Wensing said.
Reporters who were permitted near the crash site caught a whiff of jet fuel from deep woods where the plane fell. There were no visible flames or smoke, although firefighter teams were called in to put out small fires. And teams remained at the scene to put out any new fires that might ignite.
A Navy inspection team was sifting through wreckage and examining the ejection seats.
Shortly after 2 p.m., two and a half hours after the crash, Navy planes were flying again. Several jets took off, the first of them two F-14s that roared off the same runway and banked left, over the crash site. MEMO: GRIM REAPERS
Fighter Squadron 101, nicknamed the Grim Reapers, is a training unit
for Tomcat pilots, radar intercept officers and enlisted maintenance
personnel for the Atlantic Fleet.
The squadron is one of the largest in the Navy with 800 enlisted
members, 100 officers and 125 students, who are also officers, operating
50 aircraft.
The squadron specializes in radar intercept, air combat maneuvers,
tactical air reconnaissance and all-weather procedures.
Wednesday's was the first major accident involving the squadron since
Oct. 11, 1995, when a sailor was killed while working on an ejection
seat in an F-14 at Oceana. The aircraft was inside a hangar.
The last known flying fatality involving one of the squadron's
aircraft occurred in March 1993 off the coast of North Carolina.
However, the two-man crew was assigned to other commands at Oceana.
It was that crash that prompted a lengthy investigation into
afterburner problems with the F-14. The Navy acknowledged that it was
aware of afterburner liner burn-through as a potential problem as early
as 1992.
Crash likely to prompt more scrutiny of F-14 program, some area
lawmakers say/A3
ILLUSTRATION: GRAPHIC
WEDNESDAY'S CRASH
Text by JACK DORSEY, graphic by ROBERT D. VOROS
The Virginian-Pilot
Map
ASSOCIATED PRESS
An ejection seat from a Navy F-14B sits along a taxiway at Oceana
Naval Air Station after Wednesday's crash.
A sentry, above, stands guard by an ejection seat from the F-14B
fighter jet that crashed while attempting to land at Oceana Naval
Air Station Wednesday. The pilot and radar intercept officer were in
good condition after ejecting. At right, Joseph R. Kelly, 26, of
Bayview in Norfolk, said the plane turned upside down the moment the
crew ejected.
LAWRENCE JACKSON, top,
STEVE EARLEY, right
The Virginian-Pilot
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE ACCIDENT MILITARY F-14 OCEANA by CNB