The Navy ordered the squadron to suspend its operations for three days for safety reasons after the second of the squadron's four crashes. You can't believe in luck or superstition, but they're behind the eight ball and have stayed there." "We've tried to put top-notch pilots and maintenance people there. "You go back 10 or 15 years and they are snake bit," said a retired admiral who once commanded the squadron. The Navy concluded that that accident resulted from a combination of pilot error and mechanical failure. Hultgreen, died in a training accident off Southern California, rekindling tensions within the military over the decision to expand some combat roles for women.
In October 1994, one the Navy's first female fighter pilots, Lieut. The cause of that accident is still under investigation. Last September, an F-14A from the squadron exploded in flight off the Philippines, but both crew members ejected safely. The unit's safety record is by far the worst among the Navy's 13 F-14 squadrons.Ĭommander Bates was blamed for losing control of his F-14 last April while conducting training maneuvers off Hawaii. The crash was the fourth in 16 months for Fighter Squadron 213, a 14-plane unit known as the Fighting Blacklions and one of six F-14 squadrons assigned to Miramar Naval Air Station near San Diego. The Navy invests years and more than $1 million to train each of its fighter pilots, and is reluctant to dismiss them if senior officers believe an erring pilot can learn from mistakes.īut as military investigators sifted through the wreckage today for clues to what caused the crash that killed the fighter's two-man crew and three people on the ground, Navy officials said they did not know what caused Commander Bates's second crash, or why his squadron had lost so many F-14 Tomcats.
Bates was highly motivated and that accident was a one-time glitch on his record. John Stacy Bates, flew aggressively, a Navy official said today, but he added: "We want them to fly aggressively. But Navy investigators and senior admirals forgave him, saying he made a mistake in pursuit of the combative flying that the Navy wants and encourages in its pilots.
The flier whose Navy F-14A fighter plunged into a Nashville suburb on Monday, killing himself and four other people, crashed another jet into the sea last April.
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