Seconds of violent rocking, then crash

An investigation into the plunge of a military transport plane that killed 21 shows it was buffeted by winds and excess, shifting weight.

By ROBIN MITCHELL

© St. Petersburg Times,
published August 7, 2001

In a horrifying 12 seconds last March, 21 men inside a military transport plane violently twisted and pitched in a thunderstorm before plunging to their deaths in a muddy Georgia field.

But it wasn't just the thunderstorm that killed them, according to an investigative report released Monday.

The twin-prop C-23 Sherpa was overloaded with the detritus of a Virginia Air National Guard unit heading home after a two-week stint at Hurlburt Field near Fort Walton Beach. Among other things, the plane carried military gear, two sets of golf clubs and a 25-pound stereo system.

The Sherpa's crew, three men from the 171st Aviation Battalion then based in Lakeland, also were squinting into nasty weather.

The plane's weather radar was only working at about 20 percent of the required power and did not give the crew fully accurate information.

A call of nature played a role, too. The pilot's decision to go to the bathroom shifted the weight of the already unbalanced plane and caused it to become unstable and uncontrollable, the report showed.

Killed were Chief Warrant Officer Erik Paul Larson, 34, of Land O'Lakes, Staff Sgt. Robert Franklin Ward Jr., 35, of Lakeland and Chief Warrant Officer Johnny Wayne Duce, 49, of Orange Park, along with 18 members of the 203rd Red Horse Flight, a civil engineering unit based at the Camp Pendleton state military reservation in Virginia Beach.

"Aviation mishaps are seldom caused by a single factor; this one was no exception," said Maj. Gen. Ronald Harrison, adjutant general of Florida.

Harrison, who ordered the investigation, said he disagreed with the conclusion that crew error was to blame, adding that no disciplinary action would be taken immediately.

According to the report, the nose of the plane slowly pitched up and then abruptly dropped just before the crash. In three seconds, the plane rose more than 100 feet with its nose down, and was then rocked by wind shear three times greater than what is defined as extreme turbulence.

Harrison said everyone aboard is believed to have been incapacitated within the first 12 seconds that they encountered problems.

According to the report, the G-force shifts "rendered the crew and passengers incapacitated and unconscious and caused the breakup of the aircraft in flight."

The 1970s-vintage Sherpa left Lakeland earlier that March 3 morning with just its crew, picking up its passengers at Hurlburt Field and then heading toward Oceana Naval Air Station, Va. It crashed about an hour after takeoff, 45 miles south of Macon.

Rosemary Hines, sister of one of the pilots, Duce, said she was happy that Harrison believed weather was the cause.

"I knew when I went to the crash site that it was weather," she said. "I never expected him to die in a plane."

Military teams traveled throughout the country over the weekend to share the investigation's findings with family members before the official report was made public.

After Bonnie Beninati of Virginia Beach, the widow of Master Sgt. James Beninati, 46, of the Red Horse Flight, read the report Saturday and spoke at length with her debriefing team, she deduced that some of the investigators didn't think the storm had anything to do with the accident.

Beninati said she isn't angry or surprised.

"All these months, I assumed that probably someone didn't do something right, or maybe it was the storm. We'll never know. . . . Things happen in life."

She read a transcript of a tape recording of the flight's final 30 minutes. She had been wondering for months what it said.

"There was nothing on the tape to give you a hint of what happened," Beninati said.

She said the crew talked of the storm and of the radar not working properly.

"They saw the storm, veered around it," she said. "There was no talk of being right in the storm . . . or of a lot of turbulence."

One of the pilots got up to use the restroom in the back of the plane, Beninati said, and then an alarm horn went off, then another, then another. Then silence.

"It's sad; it brings it back fresh," she said.

In late March, the 171st's eight Black Hawk helicopters moved into a new 44,000-square-foot, $7-million hangar at the Hernando County Airport, south of Brooksville.

Both the Sherpa involved in the fatal crash and an additional cargo plane were supposed to move to the Hernando County Airport with the helicopter unit. After the accident, plans for a hangar for the Sherpas were put on hold, and the remaining C-23 remains in Lakeland.

The Black Hawk unit conducts state firefighting missions as well as federal training to launch into war with aviation support, including the carrying of troops, equipment and supplies.

-- Times staff writer Saundra Amrhein, the Virginian-Pilot and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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