Military plane crashes near Laguna Shores

Corpus Christi Caller ^ | 1/27/06 | Beth Wilson

[SouthTexas]

Military plane crashes near Laguna Shores

By Beth Wilson/Caller-Times January 27, 2006

A U.S. Navy trainer plane with an instructor pilot and student pilot from Naval Air Station Corpus Christi crashed about three miles south of the base near Laguna Shores Road at about 9:42 a.m. today killing both occupants, a spokesman for the Navy said.

[SouthTexas]

A T-34C, single-engine Naval Turbo Mentor trainer plane did a belly landing in the same area, near the mud bridge over Oso Creek on Jan. 12. The Navy also has not released a report on the cause of that incident. The Navy uses Waldron Field as a practice field.

[eyespysomething]

Prayers for their families.

Darn.

[USNBandit]

If it's the area I'm thinking of the mud flats are used to practice emergency landings known as High and Low Altitude Power Losses.

I went through Primary at Whiting Field in Florida, but I my friends who went through Corpus talked about it.

[SouthTexas]

In the first crash, both pilot and instructor walked away. Not so this time.

Prayers up.

[SouthTexas]

Eye witness (resident) reports that the engine didn't sound right, others said there may have been wing problems.

[USNBandit]

While the number of T-34C mishaps is relatively low it will be nice when it is replaced by the T-6. The T-6 has a pretty nice ejection seat which might save some lives. I would rather jump than crash land anyday.

[SouthTexas]

With as many flights as they have everyday over Corpus, both at Waldron and Cabiniss, it's really a wonder there are not more. Two this close together is definitely out of the ordinary.

[Diva Betsy Ross]

Shoot. Prayers for the families. What sad news.

[USNBandit]

The T-34 is a pretty nice little plane besides being old. It uses a very reliable, respected, and well known engine, a variant of the PT-6. While being relatively high performance it has good characteristics for forced landings, stall speeds, and benign out of control tendencies.

[SouthTexas]

The belly landing in the creek showed it was pretty tough too. Only looked like the prop was damaged.

[USNBandit]

That mishap got posted as a Class A so I think it must have damaged more than the prop. Hard to tell. Sometimes they get downgraded, but I remember just the reduction gear from the engine to the prop was pretty expensive back in the early 90's.

[SouthTexas]

I'm sure it damaged more, that was just what you could see from the pictures. Probably wasn't too cheap getting it out of the mud, but they had it out the same day.

[A.A. Cunningham]

Pilot, student die in Navy training jet(sic) crash [NAS Corpus Christi, Texas]