Word: captains
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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...
...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 two miles east of the academy airfield. Their plane had been written up by pilots 10 times for engine problems...
...keeps failing because it was built to operate on 24 volts while the T-3's electrical system produces 27. Even the plane's rather simple but critical cockpit gauges suffer from "extremely low" reliability, investigators wrote. "I don't know what testing went into all those different changes," Captain Pat Derock, a T-3 instructor pilot, told Air Force investigators. "Some of the modifications were probably not completely or thoroughly tested...
...Force pilots who have flown T-3s as instructors disagree. They are the widows of Comeaux and Smith. Captain Laura Comeaux had been married to Glen 25 days when he was killed, just before the couple were to buy their first house. And Captain Elizabeth Smith gave birth to her first child, Samantha Clay, four months after her husband Clay's death. "I'm afraid they will do the same thing again and not thoroughly test all the changes they're making," says Smith. She and Comeaux refuse...
...clan split into two teams: Michael was captain of one, his sister Rory the other, both wearing matching rust-colored ski suits. A game the previous day had left the score tied, Hay recalls, though there was amiable bickering over a goal. "Then they said, 'We'll play tomorrow--death to the loser...