B-1B in Fiery Crash in Texas; Crewmen Bail Out

WASHINGTON —  A B-1B bomber crashed Tuesday on a training flight near Dyess Air Force Base in West Texas, the Air Force announced. The accident destroyed the $280-million plane but the four crewmen parachuted to safety.

The bomber, which witnesses said trailed smoke and flames as it plummeted toward the ground, crashed at 3:23 p.m., about four miles north of Abilene, Tex.

The four airmen were reported in good condition at a base hospital Tuesday night. There was no immediate indication of the cause of the crash but the Air Force named a board of inquiry to investigate.

Deepening of Controversy

The crash was the second B-1B lost since the controversial long-range bomber joined the Air Force arsenal in 1986. The accident is likely to raise new questions about the plane, which has been plagued with numerous cost, quality and performance problems, including the inability to perform its primary mission of penetrating Soviet airspace at low altitude.

The Air Force bought 100 of the planes, which were manufactured in Palmdale, Calif., by Rockwell International Corp. There are now 98 B-1Bs, although only about a third are fully operational on any given day because of mechanical and electronic problems.

According to the Air Force, the crewmen who survived Tuesday’s crash were Capt. Michael E. Waters, the plane’s commander; Capt. George Gover, the pilot; Capt. Charles M. Zarza, the offensive systems operator, and 1st Lt. Anton Eret Jr., the defense systems operator. Hometowns and ages were not immediately available.

Bob Bartlett, news director of KTAB-TV in Abilene, said that he saw flames shooting from the plane’s left engine as it roared past the station’s newsroom near the Air Force base.

“We heard radio traffic on the Dyess emergency frequency that a plane was having trouble, and less than two miles away a B-1B with flames pouring out of its engine on the left side came by,” Bartlett told United Press International.

Describes Path of Plane

“The plane made an immediate right turn, tried to circle back to land, got to a point where I guess he (the pilot) felt there was no way he was going to save the aircraft and the four crew members ejected.”

Bartlett said it appeared that flames stretched from the engine past the tail of the bomber, a distance he estimated at 50 feet to 75 feet.

A spokesman at Dyess AFB said that the weather was clear Tuesday and that there had been no reports of migrating birds, which caused the previous B-1B crash last year.

In that mishap, on Sept. 28, 1987, a B-1B was demolished in a collision with a 20-pound migrating pelican at an Air Force bombing range near La Junta in southeastern Colorado. Three crew members were killed, while three successfully bailed out. An earlier prototype of the swept-wing bomber crashed in 1984 in the Mojave Desert.

After the 1987 crash, the Air Force temporarily suspended low-level training flights while it fixed a poorly designed ejection seat and strengthened weak spots in the bomber’s aluminum skin so it could withstand heavy bird strikes.

Studying Radar System

The Air Force currently is studying how to improve the plane’s terrain-following radar and its electronic jamming equipment, both of which are vital to carrying out its assigned mission of evading Soviet air defenses and delivering nuclear and conventional bombs deep inside Soviet territory.

A congressional study earlier this year estimated that it would cost $8 billion to fix the problems.

The plane is supposed to fill the gap between the aging fleet of B-52s and the new-generation B-2 stealth bomber, expected to be delivered over the next several years. Critics say that the B-2 will be operational before the B-1B can serve its designed purpose.

In addition to Dyess, the bombers are stationed at Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas.

Safest Year for Flying

The Pentagon also reported Tuesday that despite a series of crashes involving high-performance fighters, the military had its safest flying year ever in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

The Navy, Marine Corps and Army each set individual records for aviation safety, and the Air Force came close to matching its all-time best, the Pentagon added.

Combined, the four services flew their aircraft almost 7.3 million hours during the year ending Sept. 30, experiencing 137 so-called Class A accidents. That amounts to a rate of 1.88 mishaps per 100,000 flying hours, the standard military measurement.

A Class A mishap is one in which there is either a fatality or damage exceeding $500,000 to an aircraft.