Flying is dangerous enough as it is, so a plane crash is not in and of itself suspicious.
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We also lost some astronauts to plane crashes, but I think they were all before they went on any missions. Flying wasn’t as safe back then as it is now.
When I was in the USN even back in the Seventies, I was amazed at the number of crashes and mishaps.
Probably a good thing there was no Internet to speak of then. Otherwise all military planes might have been grounded by appalled civilians. As it was, unless you lived in the aviation community near the homebase of the crashed plane, or the plane crashed in a spectacular way with loss of life, people around the country never seemed to hear about it.
I know I didn’t.
We had a family friend, Sonny Carter, who was killed in a plane crash. He flew on STS-33 and was scheduled to fly on STS-42 when he died.