DATE: Tuesday, September 16, 1997           TAG: 9709160272

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B6   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT 

DATELINE: HAMPTON                           LENGTH:   88 lines

STEALTH FIGHTER'S APPEARANCE AT BEACH AIR SHOW IS QUESTIONABLE

The Air Force can't say whether the stealth fighter that broke up in midair and tumbled into two houses during a Maryland air show Sunday was to appear in Virginia Beach this weekend.

But the service says the crashed F-117A Nighthawk was one of two jets that might have been on static display and performed a fly-by at the Neptune Festival Air Show at Oceana Naval Air Station Sunday.

Whether the other would make the Beach show was still a question late Monday, as the Air Force declared a stand-down of its 52 remaining stealth fighters and began poring over its fleet with representatives of Lockheed Martin Corp., the plane's manufacturer.

One of two F-117s temporarily assigned to Langley Air Force Base in Hampton was flying at the Chesapeake Air Show near Baltimore Sunday when a piece appeared to separate from its wing or tail.

The single-seat plane drilled into a neighborhood in the waterfront suburb of Middle River, causing six minor injuries on the ground. Its pilot, Maj. Bryan Knight, ejected safely from the falling craft.

Military officials roped off the blocks surrounding the crash site Monday as they searched for pieces of the black, batwinged aircraft, a once-secret weapon whose faceted design and materials help it evade enemy radar.

Sgt. Tom Mullican, a spokesman for the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force Base, N.M. - the fighter's home base - said that a jet assigned to Langley for the warm-weather air show season was scheduled to fly to Oceana, ``but we wouldn't have known which one until they were ready to go.''

``I can say that the F-117 was committed to appear there,'' said Maj. Frank Smolinsky, a spokesman for the Langley-based Air Combat Command, ``but I can't confirm that it was this particular aircraft.''

The 49th Fighter Wing rotates two new planes into Langley every 60 days for duty at the myriad air shows dotting the eastern United States, which the service regards as prime recruiting and public relations venues.

The crashed F-117 arrived at Langley from Holloman Sept. 5. It appeared as a static display at an air show last week at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., returning to Langley afterward. It left Hampton for the Maryland air show last Friday.

The second stealth fighter assigned to Langley appeared over the weekend at an air show in Fort Smith, Ark., and remained there Monday, grounded as part of a stand-down aimed at ensuring the jet's safety in the wake of the crash.

That stand-down likely will last ``from now until the manufacturer and the Air Force goes over everything,'' Mullican said from Holloman Monday. ``There's not an ending time set for it.''

Whether a stealth fighter makes it to Oceana ``depends on whether they decide to start flying again,'' Mullican said.

``We have not received official word from the Air Force that it has been canceled,'' said Debbie Mitchell, the air show's coordinator, ``but we are going under the assumption that as long as the plane is grounded, we will not have a stealth fighter.''

Mitchell said that despite the crash, air shows rarely endanger audiences. ``Spectators are most certainly safe at an air show,'' she said. ``We're safe. We're very safe.''

Shows such as Oceana's two-day event - at which 175,000 to 200,000 people are expected - operate under guidelines set by the International Council of Air Shows, Mitchell explained.

``For Oceana, we meet all the guidelines and exceed all the guidelines,'' she said.

So secret through the early 1980s that it was restricted to remote air bases in the West and its existence denied by the Air Force, the stealth fighter was authorized in 1978 and made its first flight in June 1981.

Fifty-nine of the craft were purchased by the Air Force, Smolinsky said Monday. In the wake of Sunday's crash, 52 remain, 47 of them assigned to the 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman and another five in a test-and-evaluation squadron.

The plane involved in Sunday's crash dated to 1981, early in a production run that continued until the last F-117 was delivered in 1990.

In those 16 years, there have been nine accidents. Six involved crashes - the most recent a pair of crash landings, about a month apart, earlier this year at Holloman.

At least three accidents - in 1986, 1987 and 1995 - killed the jets' pilots.

The F-117A's accident rate of 2.72 crashes per 100,000 hours flown is ``very much in line with other fighter aircraft,'' Air Force Maj. Wes Davis said at the Pentagon Monday.

Indeed, the crash rate for the service's vaunted F-16 Fighting Falcon is far beyond that of the stealth jet - 4.54 accidents per 100,000 hours in the air - and the Navy's F/A-18 Hornet had posted a rate of 3.82 wrecks per 100,000 hours through Sunday. MEMO: Staff writer Earl Swift and the Associated Press contributed to

this report.

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