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© St. Petersburg Times, published May 10, 2002
The U.S. Coast Guard called off its search Thursday for seven crew members aboard two Navy jets that crashed into the Gulf of Mexico south of Pensacola.
"The powers that be have decided, let's quit, because we were not finding any bodies," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Chad Saylor, a spokesman for the 8th District Coast Guard in New Orleans.
Saylor said the Coast Guard searched 2,000 square miles, roughly the size of Delaware, before suspending the search about 3 p.m., nearly 24 hours after the planes vanished.
Harry White, a spokesman for the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, where the planes were based, said the two twin-engine T-39 Sabreliners were on a training mission when they disappeared from the radar.
"There was no distress call," he said.
White said he could not confirm whether the jets collided. He said an investigating team had been assembled but had not examined the evidence. The Coast Guard turned over scant debris from the wreckage to the Navy.
White declined to discuss the nature of the training mission.
Flack Logan, however, the former commanding officer of the USS Lexington, a ship used to train fighter pilots at the Naval Air Station, speculated that the training involved "intercept geometry." That means teaching students how to use radar to intercept enemy aircraft in the air.
Under the exercise, Logan said, one aircraft is designated the "good guy," and the other is designated the "bad guy."
Logan, also a former fighter pilot, described the training like this:
One aircraft heads south out of Pensacola. The other aircraft, which is over the gulf, heads north into its flight path.
As the aircraft get closer, the friendly airplane flies about 10,000 feet below the other and about 3 to 4 miles to its side. The idea is to have enough vertical and lateral separation, Logan said. Eventually, the friendly aircraft sneaks in from behind the other and simulates a missile or gun attack.
The only other type of training he could envision, which is unlikely, Logan said, is teaching the students how to fly in formation.
"Nah, they ran into each other," Logan said.
Otherwise, Logan said, "Each aircraft would have had to have a catastrophic failure at the very same time to go down."
The jets, a military version of a popular business jet with no ejection seats, are used at Pensacola for training navigators and other nonpilot air crew officers for the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force and foreign military services. The aircraft are generally flown by private contract workers.
Indeed, two civilians and a Saudi Royal Air Force officer were among the crews.
Logan said the student crews learn the basics about the job. For example, they learn about the impact of the weather on flying missions, about how to talk on the radio and about basic geometry.
Pensacola also provides basic training for future fighter pilots. "This isn't warrior-type stuff," Logan said. "This is basic-type stuff."
The Navy identified the two civilians as Homer Hutchinson III, a retired Marine, of Pensacola and Marshall Herr, a retired Navy man, of Pace, and the Saudi officer as Maj. Ambarak S. Al-Ghamdi. Hutchinson and Herr worked for Raytheon Aerospace LLC Corp.
The other missing crew members were identified as Navy officers Lt. Cmdr. William R. Muscha, 32, of Fargo, N.D.; Lt. Christopher T. Starkweather, 26, of Fort Atkinson, Wis.; and Ensign James T. Logan, 26, of Woodland Hills, Calif.; and Marine Corps. 2nd Lt. John N. Wilt, age and hometown unavailable.
The planes were assigned to Training Squadron 86, part of Training Air Wing 6. Training Squadron 86 recently amassed more than 330,000 mishap-free flight hours over 25 years and was awarded several honors for its safety record, according to its Web site.
The squadron trains flight officers in navigation, radar intercept operation, electronic warfare and airborne tactical data systems, and provides flight support for ground control approach and intercept training. Its foreign students also include trainees from Italy, Singapore and Germany.
It was the second military crash in the gulf in as many weeks. On April 30, an Air Force F-15C Eagle fighter from Eglin Air Force Base went down about 100 miles east of the Navy crash site during a weapons testing flight.
-- The Associated Press contributed to this report.