The U.S. Navy identified the two-person aircrew killed in a crash Friday in Foley, Alabama, as U.S. Coast Guard Ensign Morgan Garrett (left) and US Navy Lt. Rhiannon Ross. (US Navy)
Posted on 10/26/2020 9:18:50 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The U.S. Navy has identified the two-person crew killed Friday when a training aircraft crashed in a small town outside Mobile, Alabama.
In a news release Sunday, the Navy identified the victims as Navy Lt. Rhiannon Ross, 30, from Wixom, Michigan, and 24-year-old US Coast Guard Ensign Morgan Garrett of Weddington, North Carolina.
Ross was an instructor pilot, the Navy statement said, while Garrett was identified as a student aviator.
“Their spirit, friendship, and devotion to their country will not be forgotten,” the Navy statement said.
Ross and Garrett took off in a Navy T-6B Texan II trainer aircraft from Naval Air Station Whiting Field in Milton, Florida, on Friday for a routine training flight, the Navy said.
The aircraft crashed around 5 p.m. CT (6 p.m. ET) in a residential area of Foley, Alabama, about 30 miles southeast of Mobile by air and about 45 miles from NAS Whiting Field.
No civilians were injured in the crash, the Navy said Sunday. The incident is under investigation by the Navy and local authorities.
There are 245 T-6Bs based at the Navy’s two aviation training bases, Naval Air Station Whiting Field, which is located 24 miles northeast of Pensacola, Florida, and Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, Texas. Six additional T-6B aircraft are stationed at the US Navy Test Pilot School in Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland.
On Saturday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley expressed his condolences to Ross’ and Garrett’s families, saying in a tweet, “Today, we mourn the loss of our two fallen Shipmates who perished in yesterday’s T-6B training crash in Foley, AL. Our thoughts and prayers go out to their families and our @USNavy teammates.”
The U.S. Navy identified the two-person aircrew killed in a crash Friday in Foley, Alabama, as U.S. Coast Guard Ensign Morgan Garrett (left) and US Navy Lt. Rhiannon Ross. (US Navy)
US Navy Beechcraft T-6B
Godspeed patriots.
Regardless of how one feels about various aspects of this (and my reservations are well known) those jokes would be unwarranted.
Nothing to joke about here. Two military personnel have lost their lives.
Prayers for their souls, and their families and loved ones.
Went down just a few miles from my house. We see them everyday and I’ve been told it’s pretty darned hard to crash a T-6B... I’m not a pilot, so I really wouldn’t know if that is a true statement. RIP.
There are landing strips and farm fields all over Baldwin Co. Would appear some catastrophic event happened with the plane that they couldn’t set it down somewhere.
“pretty darned hard to crash a T-6B”
Not if its mechanical failure unfortunately
Right. I expect it wasn’t an unrecoverable spin, because I have heard the characteristics of that type are quite forgiving.
They don’t say if they ejected or not, but I have a suspicion that they didn’t.
The fact that neither of them got out indicates to me that it was a sudden and catastrophic malfunction, or they got disoriented in weather and went in without realizing they were going in.
...
Looks like it would be a fun plane to fly.
-a bird strike through the canopy (it's a fast plane)
-an exhaust leak causing them to pass out
-mechanical issue where the crew may have tried to avoid civilian deaths on the ground instead of ejecting
-the crew was caught in an inverted spin and couldn't eject
Just retired from the DoD in December. The Navy depot I was attached to reworks and overhauls this platform. I’ve done fod walks around ‘em on many occasions. I was in QA and can’t recall any major issues cropping up on them in the time my depot has had custody. I agree they’re forgiving which is why they are trainers. Also, IMO the sex of the crew has zero to do with this incident. I think I’ll reach out to my X-coworkers and see if they know anything. I suspect a JAG will be convened wherever maintenance was done on this A/C last.
RIP to these two military heroes.
I wonder what the weather conditions were like...it was still light.
However, in that time frame (from 1700-1800) it went from fair, to partly cloudy, to cloudy, to mostly cloudy (from historic Weather Underground data)
I wonder if they were disoriented and spun in without knowing it...maybe they had an electrical failure and lost instruments, then they couldn’t deploy a RAT...who knows.
We will have to wait.
That’s two families of children that’ll never happen. What kind of society kills its little girls for military use?
All volunteer military, it is what is it, I don’t think society should kill its boys for military use as well.
Yes.
I was a jet mechanic in the USN, and became quite interested in the nature of mishaps by reading the monthly incident reporting that came out for fleet consumption. I can’t remember the document’s title now.
Then, in my line of work, I often have to investigate and report on things, and since I dealt with radioactivity and later, IT, I have read extensively on nuclear mishaps, aviation mishaps, and now...IT mishaps (Doing Root Cause Analysis for things that don’t go well in IT)
In all of these things, humans are most often the weakest link, but all the other things do come into play, poor design, unexpected failures, etc.
Aviation mishaps are often not the result of just one failure...a cumulation of small, non-fatal things happen, often resulting in a pilot making a poor decision as things spiral out of control.
One of my favorite books is Frederick Forsyth’s “The Shepherd” which illustrates in novel format how things snowball when in an aircraft, eventually boxing the pilot into a terrible situation.
By the way, thanks for your service in the DOD, V_TWIN. Hope you are enjoying your retirement...
My retired Navy pilot husband says you cannot eject from this trainer. You can, however, bailout.
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