Were reports at the time that the plane was on IFR and following a beacon to the airport, but they were well off course even so, accurate? I remember speculation that the airport beacon was tampered with or the instruments on the plane might have been to intentionally throw them off course?
Since the man committed 'suicide' there is no way to prove the case.
FReeper Al Simmons commented on this in a thread yesterday. Do a search for his name and it comes up.
The USAF has to have reliable data on air field beacons and radars by physical survey before they can fly Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) into a particluar airport. In Western Europe this had been done way back from the 1940's onward. In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down and communism eded in all of Eastern Europe over the next several years (1989-1992) the USAF literally had thousands of airfields they could potentially fly into, none of whch were physically surveyed. Survey teams had gone out but of course this type of work isn't accomplished overnight.
Now because of the war in the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, we became very interested in flying missions into that country but were hard pressed to survey their airfields when war was raging. We were asked to fly civilian relief missions mostly at first, but that changed over time. The war ended in Slovenia in 1991, but then focused on Bosnia and Croatia for the next 3-4 years. Finally the US took action and got the war stopped there with the IFOR (Implimentation Force) mission in 1995 (our Army deploying into the Tuzla portion of Bosnia). But we were doing various "things" in that area for a year or two before that. That involved flying into certain airfields that had not been surveyed. USAF in Europe (USAFE) asked for waivers on the USAF regulation requiring formal surveys. After IFOR began, the waiver was rescinded. That meant we were not allowed to fly into unsurveyed airfields under IFR rules.
A few weeks before Brown's plane crashed, Hillary was on a tour of US IFOR regions to build morale (HA!). At one point she wanted to make an unscheduled stop at some city's airport that had not been surveyed. The pilot told her handlers "No", and she went ballistic, stating something like "Who to hell does that airman think he's working for? I am representing the president and he'll fly me where I say so!" At least that is the scuttlebutt we all heard. This had a profound impact on the leadup to the crash later. No general would back up the pilot so they flew Hillary's entourage where it wanted to go. NOTE: This was not published in the final report. STILL - WE KNEW IT. IT IS TRUE!
The 76th Airlift Squadron flew the CT-43's (737's) for traveling dignitaries and the 86th Air Wing (Ramstein AB operations) was the parent organization. Folks were angry high command didn't support the flyers while letting Clinton administration types push them around. USAFE did ask for another waiver specifically for these types of missions but HQ USAF turned them down. Shortly thereafter, Brown's plane crashed into a mountain on final approach during a storm near Dubrovnik.
The final accident investigation report cited a "failure of command" in causing the accident. For this, the Wing Commander, a BGen, and the USAFE Director of Operations, a MajGen, were forced to retire (essentially fired).
In my opinion, the crash was due to political pressure from grandstanding Clinton administration officials wanting to use the USAf as their personal livery service while HQ USAF did nothing knowing that to do so would put their careers on the line. The whole thing was shameful.
Read about it here:
Accident invetigation (VERY detailed) Here (.pdf)
DoD News Briefing of Invesitigation Results Here
Sec of Defense Dr. William Perry's press release on investigation results Here