THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 19, 1996 TAG: 9608190037
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: FROM WIRE REPORTS
DATELINE: JACKSON, WYO. LENGTH: 99 lines
Recovery teams had to hike and ride on horseback Sunday to reach the wreckage of a military cargo plane carrying gear for President Clinton that slammed into the side of a mountain late Saturday, killing nine people.
There was no sign of survivors amid the smoldering wreckage, said Roberta D'Amico, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service.
Clinton, who had been vacationing in the Jackson area, had left before the crash and returned to Washington early Sunday.
The four-engine C-130, built in 1974, crashed and exploded into flames in rugged terrain Saturday just before 11 p.m. MDT shortly after taking off from the Jackson Hole Airport.
The plane was headed to New York City for Clinton's birthday celebration. One Secret Service employee and eight crew members from Dyess Air Force Base near Abilene, Texas, were killed in the crash.
The Air Force dead were identified as Capt. Kevin N. Earnest, Capt. Kimberly Jo Wielhouwer, 2nd Lt. Benjamin T. Hall, Staff Sgt. Michael J. Smith Jr., Staff Sgt. Michael R. York, Senior Airman Ricky L. Merritt, Senior Airman Billy R. Ogstonand and Airman Thomas A. Stevens. Ages and hometowns were not immediately available. Secret Service Agent Aldo E. Frascoia, 57, of Washington, also died in the crash.
Clinton said he and the first lady were ``very sad and shocked'' by the crash. ``This is especially painful to us because (the victims) worked for me and did an invaluable service, and I am very sad about it,'' he said.
The cause of the crash is unknown. It occurred about 15 miles southeast of the airport in rugged, remote terrain near the top of Sheep Mountain, known locally as Sleeping Indian Mountain, in the Grand Teton range.
Airport officials said Sunday that they did not know whether the plane was off course because its departure had not been tracked on radar. There is no control tower at the small airport, which is surrounded by mountains.
Pilots use a common radio frequency to report their positions to each other.
Officials said planes that leave the airport are tracked on radar by air traffic controllers in Salt Lake City, 178 miles away, but only after pilots clear the Tetons at around 13,000 feet.
A Clinton administration official said the pilot reported mechanical trouble and had started to return to the airport. But others cautioned against speculating on why the plane went down.
``Whether they flew into the mountain or lost control for some aircraft reason, we don't know,'' said Jeff Brown, president of Jackson Hole Aviation, the airport's fixed base operator. ``It could have been an in-flight shift of cargo or who knows, engine failure, the whole gambit.''
The only parts of the plane left intact were a piece of the tail section and several wheels, said Keith Benefiel of the Teton County Search and Rescue Team.
Air Force officials from Hill Air Force Base in Utah and from Dyess will investigate the crash. The plane was equipped with voice and cockpit data recorders.
The turboprop-powered aircraft was used to shuttle presidential vehicles. It apparently was carrying a vehicle used by White House security, not a presidential limousine.
The C-130 has generally been considered an unusually safe aircraft - a slow, fat, reliable workhorse, nicknamed the Hercules - and is used mostly to haul people and equipment around the world. But this was the third fatal crash involving a C-130 in the past 15 months.
Four weeks ago, a C-130 flown by the Belgian Air Force crashed in the Netherlands, killing 32 people, most of them members of a Dutch military orchestra. And in May 1995, a C-130 carrying six Air Force reservists went down in southern Idaho after an engine caught fire, killing all aboard.
Saturday night's crash was also the third time in the past 16 months that an Air Force plane has carried U.S. government officials to their death.
In April 1995, an Air Force C-21, a military version of a Learjet executive aircraft, crashed in Alabama and killed Clark G. Fiester, an assistant Air Force secretary. A year later, two Air Force pilots trying to land their military Boeing 737 at Dubrovnik, Croatia, flew straight into the highest peak for miles around, killing all 35 people aboard, including Secretary of Commerce Ronald Brown. MEMO: The Associated Press, The New York Times and The Washington Post
contributed to this report. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic by AP and The Virginian-Pilot
Wyoming Plane Crash
Jackson, site of crash
C-130 Hercules
[info on plane]
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