Word: air
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Sept. 30, 1996, a second T-3 crashed 30 miles east of the academy, killing Cadet Dennis Rando, 21, and his instructor, Captain Clay Smith, 28. The Air Force concluded that Rando, a senior, and Smith had been practicing a forced landing and crashed when the engine failed during a key part of the maneuver. The first expert to study the wrecked engine said it was operating at impact. But when they looked into it, Air Force investigators disputed that finding, especially when they discovered that the initial expert didn't work for the Air Force, as they had thought...
...late 1996, maintenance crews were making nonstop modifications to the plane's engine, fuel system and brakes. "We've got this airplane practically rebuilt, but [the problems] just don't seem to stop," Senior Master Sergeant Michael Rutland complained to Air Force investigators looking into the second crash. "We wonder what else is wrong with it that we don't know about." More than half the instructor pilots, busy trying to teach others to fly, had "generalized anger" about the T-3, an Air Force psychologist reported. And the cadets were uneasy too. "With two accidents in two years...
...this environment that 20-year-old Pace Weber, a senior cadet, called his mother last summer and confessed his apprehension about the plane. "Since Pace was a little boy, he focused on airplanes and astronauts," Terri Weber says. "Getting into the Air Force Academy was something he wanted since junior high." Pace, who had spent 17 hours in the T-3, was flying last June 25 with his instructor, Captain Glen Comeaux, 31, when their T-3 sputtered during a turn at about 500 ft. It quickly entered a spin and exploded in a fireball just after hitting the ground...
Defenders of the plane argue that's exactly what T-3 training is meant to accomplish. "We don't want to kill people at the Air Force Academy, obviously," McPeak says. "But we drove [Commerce Secretary] Ron Brown and a planeload of VIPs into the hills of Yugoslavia because of pilot error." "We don't want to kill a planeload of people because we haven't properly identified the people who can do this job." Other Air Force officers point out that the plane has flown without an accident at an Air Force base at Hondo, Texas, where the instructors...
Many T-3 pilots at both Hondo and Colorado Springs believe the plane flies much better in the lower, and heavier, Texas air than in the thin air above Colorado's mile-high plains. Some Air Force safety experts have recommended that the entire T-3 operation be based at Hondo. "The flight school shouldn't be in the mountains," says one such expert. "But Annapolis has boats and West Point has cannon, and so saying you're not going to have planes at the Air Force Academy doesn't sound right...