http://www.spokesman.com/stories/2013/mar/11/naval-plane-crashes-harrington/
Sorry to see!
GT

Man... That is a sad looking crash site...

Really hate to see that. From the looks of the crash site, it was mercifully quick.

I'll be the first to ask....Why didn't they punch?

Without too much speculation, there are a lot of Air Force and Navy low level routes over in that area, flew quite a few of them while at McChord. At their low level speeds, an overbank in the turn would mean a pretty short time to impact. Not sure about their seats, but would they have even been in their ejection envelope? Will be keeping an eye out through the news and for any non-priveleged stuff that comes from the local safey shop.

They have some pretty low routes there!!, AN A6 (I think) mid aired with an Agcat quite a few years ago, same area!!, Both made it to the ground alive!
GT

This aircraft crashed immediately after passing "very low" over a farmer that is a family friend of ours. Over the last approximate week, he had been "buzzed" 4 or 5 times. Buzzing is pretty normal ops for low level ops out in the farm country, but the friend stated that this has been getting a little excessive. He didn't specify if that comment was due to frequency, low level or other factors. On today's pass, as the jet passed over head it rolled into approximately 90 degrees of bank at very low altitude, and failed to maintain it's flight path above the very flat terrain! There was no chance for any of the crew to eject.

Initial impact crater was approx 50' long, 30' wide, 20' deep. Largest piece of aircraft was approx the size of a car hood. The crew did not fair any better.

Rest their souls!

Wow, so sad to see. Low and slow is dangerous enough, but low and fast; that's for the pros.

April 14, 1993 Twenty years ago next month. Keith Graham was from Homedale, ID.
They flat ass ran him over. One report was that he had finished a pass and was pulling up but I seem to remember people in my industry saying that he was lumbering out with a load in a SLOW (loaded 600 Ag-Cat) climb when they came up behind him.

http://community.seattletimes.nwsource. ... ug=1696113

"Very low" is the intent of the low level training route. In the C-17, we flew at 300' AGL, we fly them at 500' AGL in the T-6. I have no idea what the A-6's fly at, but I would venture to say that they are definitely in that range. I doubt many military aviators, especially in the fiscal and "political" environment of our military these days, will go out of their way to "buzz" anyone, especially out in Eastern Washington, where noise complaints are plentiful, mostly from people who bought land under a low level route and then proceeded to complain about the noise and airplanes, never mind the fact that the MTR was there for decades. As far as instances with civilian aircraft are concerned, the MTRs are published for all to see. People are pretty quick to jump on the bandwagon to crucify the military pilot for having a midair with a civilian aircraft, even though the MTR was published on charts and the civilian pilot was well aware of the training activity. The guys in the A-6 are doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 400+ kts ground speed, there isn't a lot of time to react when a 100 knot airplane pulls in front of you, while you are operating in a charted and published MTR...

Well jet jockeys, I take some concern with your attitude.

Yes I was in the military (tanks not aviation). I grew up on a ranch in southern Idaho which has been operated by my family prior to flight (we were there first) in a tight narrow valley with a huge open area 1.5 miles south of the ranch.

You can't tell me a 25 year old won't push the envelope on how low & how fast.

My father flies a Super Cub off a private strip and we either spray or pay a family friend to spray the small farm. Mntn. Home & Hill AFB have been notified of all this (years ago) to include all specific locations of the operations. I still can make out the graphics on helmets of a few of the pilots due to them being around 100' AGL.

A phone call is made when blatant disregard is shown & it will stop for a few weeks. Then they get a new hot head. They have also lined up on sheep just to watch them scatter. Say it would never happen. I have had to gather livestock from it. It also cracks the perfatape on the ceiling in the houses. Fix it and then fix next year forever.

Once in a while is cool, just don't kill bugs while buzzing the existing dirt strip while looking at the hanger.

byeBill

PD

I grew up in E Wash and was 20 year USAF fighter pilot as well.

1. I personally have been standing on an irrigation circle (15' AGL) and looked down on A-6's along the banks of the Columbia River near Quincy. We aren't talking about 300' low level runs in this case. I challenge you to go talk to Patriotic, Pro-miiltary citizens in the farm country on the east side and simply ask how many have seen jets below 200' AGL. Better bring a lot of pencil/paper to document them.

2. Most military guys I flew with have flown well below "min authorized altitudes" at times.

3. From a tactical standpoint, there is almost zero need for 95% of the low-level training that the US military currently conducts. Yes it is fun, But go study recent aerial combat, WE DON'T FIGHT LOW ANYMORE!

4. The whole issue of low level routes and VFR see and avoid traffic is a different issue. See and Avoid is 99% the responsibility of the faster/overtaking aircraft. It is impossible to fully deconflict scheduled low level traffic and VFR traffic. The military can't even adequately deconflict on their own routes between different services, commands or even Air Force units at times. Civilians aren't perfect, but as military pilots we definitely aren't/weren't either. An regardless, you can run into the back of a slower airplane and blame it on them. There are simply times/places/conditions that the best visual search/deconfliction/flight following won't prevent a very near miss of collision unfortunately.

5. You better check your facts on what has been around the longest, /farms under the same family ownership or MTR routes. 95% of the time your statement demonstrates absolute ZERO SA of the environment you operate in on the other side of the state!

Don't take any of this personally, it is not a attack on you, the USAF, military or anyone else, I have simply stated factual info and I'm more than willing to talk off-line about any and or all of it.

Fly Safe

That doesn't look like low and fast gone bad to me, it looks like a loop not quite finished.

I was thinking the same thing....debris trail looks a little short for a high speed/low angle impact.

I grew up under the R2508 complex and did my early flying within the MOA then spent many years working inside the Edwards R2508 . MOA is Joint use airspace. I kept my head on a swivel but it doesnt mean I have to remain clear of a MTR 24/7. We even have Tomahawk missile routes that havent been used in decades. Still makes you look both ways everytime you cross. If I am driving along at 90kts and someone is Low level at 400 and cant see or react beyond 1 second ahead doesnt mean its my fault I couldnt get out of his way. I would get this attitude from the F-18 guys. My boss flew the Blackbird and she never gave me any of it. I used to dive and run down canyons, did my best to clear the area before I entered but if I ran someone down in the MOA it would have been my fault.

I live on the Columbia due west of the crash site, about 20 minutes away by air for me, and 2 minutes for them.
The last few days they have been flying low level training in the mornings. Yesterday 2 jets went supersonic over the canyon, shook my house. It is pretty cool when it happens. Often we will have overcast from 1500 to about 2500 to 3000. My house is at 750, the river is at 650, and the top of the canyon is about 2500. I have seen them appear out of the clouds and drop into the canyon. Scary as hell if you are in a C150 trying to stay out of the clouds and they fly over the top of you.
My friend was up in his Cherokee when it happened, but he came back and put his airplane away without stopping by to chat (unusual for him) He is in my EMT class, I will see him tomorrow, he may have seen it happen. I may go look at the crash sight when I go out in my buddy's RV6 tomorrow.

The sectional shows IR324 and IR327 as the path they should be on, but I don't think they follow those. I see them on them often, but I also see them everywhere else.

David

I was a Navy pilot. 200-300' is the absolute minimum on low levels. Go lower and learn to dance on carpet. The A-6 has a special coupled low level radar guided mode. It is hands off, computer does the flying. From the impact site pic, it looks like he hit at an unusual attitude, small trench to big crater. When they slide in at a too low altitude they slide and cartwheel, big debris field. Same if in a turn. This one did a meteor style crater, with a debris plume. So something beside having his head in his rectal cavity happened.

Going low to avoid radar days are indeed over. The radar tracks your doppler shift, not the return. Only shifted returns are processed by the system, and that is filtered for speed. The reason for low level nowadays is to take out SAM sites, they don't work at low altitude. The EA-6 will trick the site and fake an altitude to the sites radar system by playing with fake returns. Then fire a HARM missile down it throat. If your up high, it is harder to fake out multiple sites, they all tend to network these days. The missile work by illuminating your aircraft with very high scan rate radar. The missile tracks the reflection of your aircraft, its called beam riding. The missile lacks the processing power to do AMTI (Airborne Moving Target Indicator), so again low messes it up.

Military pilots will continue to piss off farmers and ranchers, always have and it will continue. If we want timid pilots then they will never deviate from the rules. If you want pilots that win wars, we got to mix it up a bit. This is why you have to pass a boxing class and do three bouts to become a Navy pilot, we have to be aggressive. Ask the Germans, Japanese, North Koreans and North Vietnamese pilots if they want to mess with our guys again. Navy has bought a lot of milk, eggs and baby sheep & cows over the last 100 years and hopefully continue to do so. Otherwise we will have a bunch of politically correct soft spoken pilots that are systems engineers and sensitive guys & gals.

A few of us die along the way. I personally watched 7 of my friends die while in the service, its a tough life and having dead friends is just part of it. Sad when somebody buys it. THe EA-6 is old, really old and most are so old their wings have had to be replaced. They do tend to just fall apart in the air now. A lot of the stuff is over its service life, it has been flown to death and life extensions have been penciled not riveted.

I have 3+ years flying the Prowler, Whidbey NAS & the USS AMERICA. 1st off the EA-6B looks similar to the A-6, but is very different. The A-6 averages much older & have all been parked for a while. During my time in the mid to late 80's we had some new Prowlers hitting the ramp, or close to new. Yes, they would be old now if the same air frames.

Even back in my day they were fairly strict about low level ops, that included checking in with FSS to list the route 'active' and flying within the prescribed altitudes. You are usually to busy flying & navigating to do a dedicated 'buzz job' on a field of sheep. More likely that farm just happens to be under the training route. The common ops was to set the radar altimeter just under the lower minimum altitude. With a specific time you check in, any complaint along the route was easily traced back to the user. You may get a call 'the plane was at 50 feet' from a lay person, when in fact it was higher. Yes, that could work both ways.

The normal way to buy some time for a low altitude ejection is a 'zoom climb'. That gets you away from the ground & slows the speed. Of course low & fast can leave little time to react, 'fully engaged' is the only way to operate.

As a light a/c flyer I do pay heed to LL training routes. I would do all the more so in a busy area. Back when the A-6 was flying the VR & IR routes around WA State were used multiple times a day, at night even with the A-6.

With no attempt to eject, whatever happened, happened fast. Very sorry to hear about the accident.

Jughead, I stand corrected on the timeline issue. I'm out in Mississippi now(haven't got around to update my profile yet) and we have numerous people who have built homes right by the airfield and right at the entry point of an MTR, and as soon as they move in the complaints start. I would also argue that flying low is still a necessary skill, especially in a heavy type aircraft. You are harder to see, so you spend less time as a target for a MANPAD, and it just makes sense to fly low in an airdrop scenario. I hope I wasn't coming accrossed as saying it is never the military pilot's fault, and I assure you I am anything but a low-flying hothead that wants to bust training rules. I feel that this is an area that a lot of GA pilots and military agencies need to put their heads together and educate eachother about flying in proximity of MTRs and high-traffic civilian areas. An MTR is generally 10NM wide, so aircraft will not always be in the same spot as the last guy, and they do take up a lot of airspace. It is too bad that there isn't a way to work with Ag-Pilots working within an MTR corridor to deconflict so we don't get the situation where they crop duster gets rear ended by a jet flying the route.

Whether you think low altitude training is outdated or not, we still are required to be proficient at it. This means that a squadron is required to have a minimum number of pilots proficient at LAT at any given time, or we are in hot water with the brass. Because flying low is a skill that degrades quickly, it also means the time in which a pilot goes uncurrent is a small window. We have no choice when it comes to flying like this!

We have also been told that get caught flying below minimum altitudes will get your wings pulled very quick. I don't know anyone who flirts with these altitudes.

Not a lot of time to react low and fast. I pray for the families and anxiously wait for the pilot and flight officers names to be released.