Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Hornet Down ***Updated***

An F/A-18D Hornet preparing to land at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, Calif. crashed in a densely populated San Diego neighborhood Monday, killing two three four people on the ground and destroying two houses.

There was little sign of the plane in the smoky ruins, but a piece of cockpit sat on the roof of one home. A Navy bomb disposal truck was at the site, and Marines were talking with police. Authorities told observers to leave because the smoke was toxic.

The Marine Aviator, who ejected safely and ended up hanging by his parachute from a tree in a canyon beneath the neighborhood, was in stable condition at a Navy hospital, said 1st Lt. Katheryn Putnam, a Miramar spokeswoman. "He had been returning from training on the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln off the coast. Investigators will review information from a flight data recorder. There was no indication the pilot was using alcohol or drugs."

The exact cause of the crash is not yet known, but Steve Diamond, a former military instructor who witnessed the crash, said the downed pilot told him the plane suffered a mechanical problem. "The pilot was flying quite low in the moments before he ejected," Diamond said.

The Navy recently inspected hundreds of F/A-18 Hornets, built by Boeing Co., after discovering "fatigue cracks" on more than a dozen of them. The inspections looked for cracks in a hinge that connects the aileron — a flap that helps stabilize the jet in flight — to the wing. The Navy announced last month it had grounded 10 of the $57 million fighters and placed flight restrictions on 20 more until repairs could be made.

[Left] The distinctive markings of an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet from the Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 101 (VMFAT-101) the unit from which the crashed plane was part of.

Source: FoxNews, AP, Sky News

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Lt.Col, I notice you don't give the name of the pilot but seem to have an intimate knowledge of the details of this incident, under these circumstances I am afraid I have to ask about your whereabouts at the time of the incident.

Unknown said...

I heard that Sex Piss Man (or l'homme de sex pee pee as the French call him) shot down that plane with a mighty jet of giz. I also heard that he is going to carry out a series of random (and randy) "sexy terrorist" attacks over the mext few months culminating in the impregnation of every fertile, and hot, American woman over the age of sixteen. Would the Colnel like to comment on this??

Anonymous said...

"every fertile, and hot, American woman over the age of sixteen", Watch out Connie!

Anonymous said...

Wow.

You know, normally I would love to play along with you guys, but I am so utterly baffled by what your crazyman Cubaboy said that all I can say is "huh?"

I do know, however, that I will have to dock some points from Cubaboy for his appalling misuse of commas.

Major General Creedon said...

@ Civvy: Let's just say I wasn't the WSO on the Jet nor I was not in the Miramar Control Tower at the time.

@ Cubaboy: Ehhh... No. But welcome back man. I was beginning to think that no one was going to leave random pointless comments on my blog anymore.

@ Constance: You probably made the mistake of trying to understand not the words- but the point. Don't.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I don't know. I didn't understand most of the words, either!