Aerobats slam into desert

Press, 20 January 1982, Page 8

Aerobats slam into desert

NZPA Indian Springs. Nevada Four members of the United States Air Force Thunderbirds precision flying team were killed yesterday during practice and a spokesman said it may have been a collision or "follow the leader into the ground."

The four red. white, and blue jets crashed into the desert at more than 640km/h after completing a manoeuvre known as a lineabreast loop. In the manoeuvre, the jets line up side by side, do a backward loop several hundred metres into the air. then plunge downward at more than 640km/h. levelling off about 30 metres above the ground.

“We don’t know whether it was a mid-air collision or a case of follow the leader into the ground." said Sergeant Jack Conner, spokesman at Nellis Air Force Base, the team’s home base. He said that the Thunderbirds pilots were trained to “fly off the commanderleader." watching only the

plane next to them and not the ground or their instruments because of the tight formation in which they fly

— often as close as one metre apart.

“Normally, he’s (the commander) the only one looking where he’s going.” Sergeant Conner said. It was the worst accident in the history of the preci-sion-flying team, the Air Force said.

The collision brought to 19 the number of Thunderbird pilots killed since the team was formed in 1956, Air Force officers at Nellis base said. A former commander of the team was killed last year. Twenty-nine planes have been flestroyed in the crashes, the officers said.

In Salon-de-Provence. southern France, an Alpha Jet of France’s air aerobatic team crashed on a training flight yesterday, killing the pilot, military authorities reported. Last October 7. the leader of the aerobatics team, Colonel Guy Charvet, was killed on a training flight.