Three feared dead as military jet crashes in eastern Washington

Three feared dead as military jet crashes in eastern Washington

rt.com

A military plane has crashed after setting off from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in eastern Washington, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office has confirmed. All three people on board are believed dead.

The plane went down around 10 miles outside of Harrington, Washington on Monday morning, Lincoln County Sheriff Wade told Komo 4 News.

He said there were no survivors and police were cordoning off the crash site while waiting for investigators to reach the scene.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Hi all...

Not of fan of being the bearer of bad news..

However this story is not being covered by any off the major US MSM outlets.. I.e fox, cnn, msnbc etc..

When more info comes out on the identities of the people that will tell us more.. But for the time being, a prayer to those who lost their lives..


I wonder why this is not being covered by the US MSM...? Any thoughts..?

peace
fluffx





rt.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Might not have hit their desk yet.

In an odd way they were lucky. The Prowler can carry a crew of four, the pilot and three ECMOs, although lately they've only been using 2 ECMOs. Until the E/A-18 Growler started flying, the EA-6B was the only electronic warfare aircraft capable of going in with a strike package for the entire US military.

The Marines operate four squadrons (VMAQ-1, 2, 3, 4) out of Cherry Point, NC, while the Navy operates the vast majority of them with nine squadrons now (six others were replaced by the E/A-18G). They operate VAQ-129 (fleet training/replacement squadron), VAQ-131, VAQ-133, VAQ-134, VAQ-136, VAQ-140, VAQ-142 all out of NAS Whidbey Island. VAQ-130, VAQ-132, VAQ-135, VAQ-137, VAQ-138, VAQ-139 out of Whidbey transitioned to the E/A-18 between 2009 and 2011. VAQ-141 transitioned to the Growler, and flies out of NAF Atsugi in Japan. VAQ-209 also flies the Prowler out of NAF Washington.

The Prowler is old, one of the reasons they are buying the Growler. It's based on the A-6 Intruder airframe, which flew in 1960, and was retired in 1997. The Prowler was introduced in 1968 to improve the Navy's electronic warfare capabilities. It's been upgraded with new engines, new electronics, etc. It was produced until 1991, but even the newest are showing signs of age. They're high maintenance aircraft due to their mission profile, among other things.

More links:
blogs.seattletimes.com...
seattletimes.com...
www.whidbeynewstimes.com... (includes picture. Very high speed fairly shallow impact)

It was from VAQ-129. It went down about 50 miles outside Spokane during a training mission.

RIP.

I wonder why they didn't eject? I'm pretty sure the Prowler has ejection seats. Something must have happened really badly really quickly to where the pilots didn't have a chance to react.

reply to post by majesticgent


They may have been operating at low level. The Prowler trains a lot to go in at low level ahead of the strike package to hunt SAM sites. If they were low, whatever happened would have been too fast to get out.

The worst EA-6B accident in history happened in Italy during a low level flight, when the aircraft clipped the cable holding a gondola with 20 people with its tail. The cable snapped, and the gondola fell. The aircraft recovered safely in that case.

It is amazing to me how many people in the military die from training exercises, etc....

reply to post by pjhead1


The US trains how they fight. That means putting the troops in danger as close to how real combat will be as they possibly can. A number of pilots that trained at Red Flag said later that real combat was easy compared to that. Unfortunately, that means sometimes there will be casualties.