Originally Posted By: Astro14
Quite clearly. All too clearly.
I was involved, tangentially, in the mishap investigation. I was, at the time, the head of the carrier landing phase of instruction at VF-101, the F-14 training squadron on the East Coast. Her carrier landing performance in training was a focus area of the investigation. My records and experience in that job were part of the input.
Simply: she shouldn't have passed F-14 training.
The Tomcat wasn't easy to bring aboard, in fact, it was the most demanding of airplanes at the time. But political pressure, in particular, from Representative Pat Schroeder, over-rode the good judgement of the instructors, and allowed her to pass training on the 3rd try, and go on to the fleet.
She crashed the airplane because of poor flying skills.
She was too close abeam the carrier when she began the approach turn. To compensate, she skidded the airplane, using left rudder, a horrible technique that caused an engine stall. She failed to recognize the engine stall, she failed to keep the airplane at the proper speed, she failed to identify the stall to her RIO (good guy named Matt Klemish, one of my students in VF-101), and she continued the approach without reconfiguring the airplane for a single engine approach (speed brakes in, DLC off, 14 units AOA).
As the airplane rolled out on final, it was nearly 20 knots slow (one or two knots slow is noticeable to a good LSO) and was waved off.
Because the airplane was so slow, full power on the right engine didn't stop the airplane from descending (she was, in aerodynamic terms, well behind the power curve), so, she selected afterburner.
Except that the airplane was below the minimum controllable airspeed (140 KIAS) for one engine in afterburner.
It snap-rolled left - as any airplane below VMCA would, and crashed.
Matt initiated ejection as it began the roll. His seat left the airplane 0.3 seconds before hers. He made it. She didn't.
The Navy, trying desperately to maintain its image in the aftermath of the 1991 Tailhook convention, released the JAG investigation, that was charged with determining misconduct and line of duty (inept flying is NOT misconduct- willfully disregarding order is misconduct) and she was killed in the line of duty.
But that wasn't the real story. The real story was in the mishap investigation- which is never released to the public, ever, which found the cause to be pilot error.
The real error, though, was allowing someone to pass training when they didn't have the skills to handle that airplane. She was fine in simpler, easier airplanes, but allowing her to fly the Tomcat was a mistake that ultimately took her life.
I always kept that in mind when I was training, and judging the performance of, my students in the carrier landing phase. Not every one of my students passed. But every one that did pass, and flew Tomcats in the fleet, is still alive.
Astro: thank you kindly for the real reason the crash/incident happened. As my stepfather Charles says "a split second misjudgment can be very deadly in a fighter jet and things happen very, very fast!"
He flew the P-3 ORION