STORM2K

April 5, 2006 - The Coast Guard says the pilot of an F-16 fighter jet that crashed Wednesday in the Atlantic Ocean about 35 miles off Myrtle Beach has been found alive.

Petty Officer Bobby Nash says the pilot, Captain Ted Shultz with the 55th Fighter Squadron, was found about two hours after the crash. He appeared to be in stable condition. He was picked up by a Navy ship, then taken by coast guard helicopter to MUSC.

Air Force Lieutenant Bryan Cox says the jet was on a training mission from Shaw Air Force Base when it went down around 5:40pm. Lt. Bryan Cox says, "It's an intense thing. It's a last-ditch effort. Basically, a pilot says they are giving up on this aircraft."

Lt. Cox says they don't know why the $30 million jet went down. There will be an independent accident board investigation, but that's not the focus right now, according to Lt. Cox, "Right now, it's the safety of the pilot. You can replace an aircraft, but you can't replace a pilot."

A board of officers will investigate the accident.

It was almost exactly a year ago when another Shaw F-16 crashed. And it was almost the exact same scenario as Wednesday's crash.

The F-16 was on a routine training mission when the pilots reported there was something wrong with the engine. Minutes later, the pilots ejected. The plane crashed in a marsh in Charleston.

The people who saw it all happen say that's a miracle the pilots were able to walk away from the fiery crash, virtually unharmed. The crash was later determined to be a maintenance error.

After last year's crash, the F-16s were grounded for routine inspections. On a normal day, fighter jets at Shaw Air Force Base take off for training missions about 40 times a day.

Pilot ejects before Luke F-16 crashes

David Madrid, Charles Kelly and Brent Whiting
The Arizona Republic
Apr. 11, 2006 12:02 PM

A Luke Air Force Base F-16 crashed this morning near Cotton Lane and Camelback Road in the West Valley.

The details of the crash are not known, except that the pilot safely ejected and was taken to Banner Estrella Medical Center, 9201 W. Thomas Road. The condition of the pilot is not yet known.

Surprise resident Candice Maier, 27, said she saw two jets take off from Luke and it was apparent one of the jets had problems.








Large flames were coming from the jet, and suddenly, the pilot ejected, she said. Then Maier heard a large boom and saw smoke where the plane crashed in a cabbage field.

Roger Schneider, 53, of Goodyear, was riding his bicycle when he saw the jets taking off and large flames coming out the rear of one of the jets. He also saw the pilot eject.

Shortly after the crash, about a dozen airmen were walking the cabbage field with eyes fixed on the ground.

Luke is the largest fighter wing in the world, with pilots flying about 170 sorties a day. The crash occurred in Luke's Southern Departure Corridor, the base's route to the Barry M. Goldwater Range for jets carrying live arms.

The base stopped flights with live arms from flying to the north due to encroachment from Surprise and El Mirage.

Luke officials though, say the F-16 was not carrying live arms. If there are no live arms on the jets, the wind dictates the direction they will fly out of the base.

The last crash of an F-16 connected to Luke occurred on May 19, 2004. In that incident, an F-16 Singapore Air Force jet fighter crashed during routine flight training in southern Arizona.

The pilot, 1st Lt. Brandon Loo, 25, was killed in the crash, which occurred while he was taking part in night-vision goggle training south of the Goldwater Range in the Sells Military Operating Area.

Before that, two Luke F-16s crashed on June 10 and June 13, 2003. The first of those crashes was caused by a defective engine part, and the second crash was caused by a large turkey vulture that was sucked into the jet engine.

At the time, those crashes were the 13th and 14th crashes that had occurred in the previous four years. During that period, Luke had a string of nine crashes within 20 months, which led to increased inspections and retrofitting engines in the aging jet fighters. Those actions significantly reduced the number of crashes.

Luke graduates more than 400 pilots and 700 to 900 crew chiefs a year.