Pilots eject safely over Oglethorpe
By Joe Johnson joe.johnson@onlineathens.com
LEXINGTON - Two Navy aviators on a training mission out of Florida safely ejected from their crippled jet Thursday morning before the aircraft crashed in a ball of fire in Oglethorpe County.
The fliers were found during a search that involved approximately 300 personnel from a host of emergency services agencies from Oglethorpe and Athens-Clarke counties. They were located by a Georgia State Patrol helicopter pilot.
The unharmed airmen stepped into an ambulance on their own power, and were taken to Athens Regional Medical Center for precautionary examinations, according to Navy spokesman Mike Mauss. He said the Navy would be unlikely to release the names of the pilot and co-pilot, since neither was injured. He said each was a male lieutenant with more than 1,000 hours of flight time in the type of jet that crashed, an S-3B Viking.
The plane belonged to Sea Control Squadron 24, stationed at Jacksonville Naval Air Station, and left Jacksonville at 9:15 a.m. on a routine training mission, where it was due to return, Mauss said. Sea Control Squadron 24 was involved in Operation Iraqi Freedom, flying 339 sorties from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Mediterranean Sea.
Sometime prior to the 11:19 a.m. crash, Athens-Clarke County Fire Department staged personnel at Athens-Ben Epps Airport on a report an inbound plane had smoke in the cockpit and had lost its hydraulics. The aircraft turned out to be the crippled Navy jet, and local fire crews were redirected to Oglethorpe County upon news of the crash.
Rescue personnel were initially operating under the belief the downed aircraft contained live missiles, but Mauss said that had been just a rumor.
''There were no weapons on this aircraft whatsoever,'' Mauss said. ''Anytime people hear about a military aircraft going down, they assume it was carrying weapons.''
The crash site was approximately halfway between Vesta and Sandy Cross in northeastern Oglethorpe County. The staging area for rescue personnel was at the intersection of Veribest and Allgood roads in the unincorporated community of Veribest.
Two eyewitnesses questioned by local and Naval police were employees of the Millstone Quarry, who were told by officials not to speak with the media and were kept within an area cordoned off with yellow crime scene tape.
One of those employees was overheard telling officers, ''I saw it all. I saw it flying over and I saw it go down.'' Quarry employee Edward Bowman, speaking from his truck as he was exiting the quarry at quitting time, said, ''We saw this plane coming in real low over the trees, and then there was this big red ball of smoke.''
Cameron Caldwell, 34, was sitting outside Tom's Place, his father's convenience store across the road from the staging area.
''I just heard an explosion, but I thought it was from the quarry,'' said Caldwell, who is blind. ''But then I heard everyone yelling about the smoke and all.''
Viola Allgood was cleaning inside her farm house and thought nothing of the explosion until a friend from nearby Crawford called to tell her about the crash.
She said she went outside and could see smoke billowing from a spot at least a mile from her residence, well beyond where her cows were grazing.
Although Mauss said he was unaware of the type of training the jet was on, he said oftentimes when the S-3B Viking is flown with only two crew members, it is for in-flight refueling. At the time of the crash it was not equipped with fuel storage tanks, however, he said.
Mauss said the aircraft is also used for anti-submarine warfare, at which time it would have four crew members. The S-3B Viking does not have a history of crashes due to mechanical failures, according to Mauss.
Mauss said the crash is being investigated by the Naval Accident Investigation Review Board, which in addition to examining the wreckage will review the downed plane's maintenance logs and mission histories. He said such investigations can take up to four months to complete, but because both crew members survived, their eyewitness information could help bring the probe to a speedy conclusion.
''We have two survivors who can tell their stories to the review board,'' Mauss said.