The Baltimore Sun from Baltimore, Maryland • Page 94

Page 6a Tuesday, September 16, 1997 The Sun Air Show Crash oung and old shaken by terror of plane tumbling toward them Children at play on piers ran or froze as Nighthawk came apart "I grabbed my son Maxwell, put him under my arm like a football and started to run, But it was like one of those dreams where you start to run and run and younever get anywhere." Tom Lehner, Bo wleys Quarters resident By Joe Nawrozki r-, i 3 i 'I I )r Others find it hard to escape the memories, too. When the F-117A Nighthawk was dropping from the sky Sunday, Tom Lehner was at the end of his pier two properties down from the Bongiorno's several hundred feet from the crash site. "I grabbed my son Maxwell, put him under my arm like a football and started to run," said Lehner, president of the Bowleys Quarters Improvement Association. "But it was like one of those dreams where you start to run and run and you never get anywhere, you don't know where you're going. "None of us will forget this, none of us." land Latin School in Northeast Baltimore.

"Carmen told me that when planes land and take off in the future from the Martin airport, he's going to hide under his bed." The father said he's been unable to sleep since the crash. "I was riveted on that plane, everything was out of focus," he said, recalling the plummeting plane. "Then I couldn't watch enough on the news. Now I can't sleep. We're all still pretty nervous.

"It's very weird, all I can see is the plane coming at us. We're all numb, being that close to disaster." He said yesterday that the entire family will enter counseling. PERRY THOR8VIK BUN STAFF "Like a big Carmen Bongiorno, 9, indicated how the stealth jet fighter appeared as it tumbled above him as his parents, Rosemary and Victor Bondiorno, look on at their home in Bowleys Quarters. Carmen Bongiorno, 9, can't shake the nightmarish vision of a high-technology fighter plane twisting wildly out of the sky toward him on a sunny afternoon. "It was like a big black bat, turning and twisting in slow motion," said the child from Bowleys Quarters, one of scores of people still shaken from Sunday's crash of the F-117A into a house on Chester Road.

"I've never felt frozen like that," Carmen said yesterday, using his hands to describe how the plummeting stealth jet headed toward his yard, before veering into the back of a nearby home and bursting into flames. "I never want to feel that way again." Area residents have grown accustomed to the noise from Martin State Airport, which is used by Maryland Air National Guard C-130s and A-10s, as well as the Maryland State Police helicopter and private jets. But Sunday was no ordinary day. For the Bongiornos and other residents, life and feelings won't return to normal for a long time. 4 A dull thud When Carmen's father, Victor, owner of a Baltimore County construction firm, saw the stealth fighter smoking and wobbling toward them, he ran.

HTdarted straight for Carmen, who was playing with friends on a neighbor's pier on Frog Mortar Creek, about 1,000 feet from the Rnnt. t.hp aircraft, crnshprl witVTn Air Force grounds all stealth jets; investigation of air-show crash begins Ml Vt'Sv-H 7 ASSOCIATED PRESS Stranded: Resident Vincent Dimick (left) talks to Air Force Lt. Col. Prete (right) yesterday about returning to his home near the site of a stealthfighter crash. The area has been cordoned off since Sunday.

Evacuated residents just want to return to homes, routines uii tiiuu, tiicii uuiuciuua mc balls." "When I grabbed him, my son was frozen stiff," said Victor, 44, who lives on Susquehanna Avenue. "I just picked him up and yelled for my wife." The other children on the pier, Andrew and Michelle Urbanowskl, ran with their aunt Anna Bialo-zynski off the pier. "We were running in terror," said Bialozynski, who lives next door and was celebrating her ViHair Qi in Hair "Anrauj Irorf AU11, A wtiiiit wt it W1 ilia hJK, We thought about jumping into the water." Worried for son Another Susquehanna Avenue resident, gripped with fear, took off blindly and ran into a high wooden fence, Bongiorno said. Rosemary Bongiorno, mother of Carmen and Victor, 16, was washing windows at home. "It was horrible," she said.

"It was like you couldn't move, only watch that plane flutter straight for us." "While I'm still shaken, I'm most worried for Carmen," she said of her son, who got a late start for yesterday's classes at Cross- midair collision of an Air Force cargo plane with a German air force plane off the coast of Africa; nine Americans and 24 Germans were feared dead. In another incident, a Navy F-A-18 fighter crashed Sunday in Oman, killing the pilot. Armed guards Yesterday, armed Air Force guards formed a tight ring of security around the Bowleys Quarters crash site, where about a dozen families had been evacuated. The Virginia-based Air Combat Command, under which fighters, bombers and missiles are organized, will open two probes into the accident. A safety investigation, intended to prevent a repeat of the crash, will include an investigating officer, a pilot trained to fly an F-117 and draw on experts in maintenance, medicine and safe-' ty.

Some witness testimony will be kept private, officials say. A separate legal probe will determine whether anyone should be disciplined and will gather evidence that might be used in a court case. The plane's manufacturer, Lockheed-Martin, had its engineers examining the videotape of the crash at its Skunk Works design and manufacturing plant in California. "We're prepared to assist the Air Force in any way they desire," said company spokesman RonLindeke. Safety record F-117s of the type that crashed have had eight previous mishaps, ranging from fatal crashes to relatively minor failures of landing gear.

The earliest accidents occurred when the plane was still part of a highly classified research project, and debris was quickly removed from the scene. But officials could recall no incident in which part of the plane broke off in midair. Lt. Gen. George K.

Muellner, the Air Force's leading acquisitions executive at the Pentagon, said he did not know what may have caused the crash or whether the rest of the fleet of F-117s could be at risk. So far, evidence indicates only that "some sort of structural issue led to loss of control." The Air Combat Command was still going over data, Muellner said, to "determine what if any impact this has on the fleet." He said investigators hoped to have some answers in 24 to 48 hours. According to Air Force records, the plane has a safety record comparable to that of the older F-15, with 2.72 mishaps per 100,000 flying hours. The F-15 rate is 2.61. The boomerang-shaped F-117A Nighthawk uses a unique design and special coating over its surface to avoid enemy radar.

F-117 stealth fighter 'Difficult plane to handle' "It's an extremely difficult plane to handle. It was not designed with aerodynamics in mind, it was designed with stealth in mind. One thing goes wrong and it doesn't keep flying, it just plummets to Earth because it's not naturally aerodynamic," said Richard Aboulafia, a military aircraft expert with the Teal Group defense consulting firm in McLean, Va. The plane's midair breakup "is a mystery," said Michael Vickers of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a defense-oriented think tank. When parts fall off, it is usually as a result of metal fatigue that occurs in much older aircraft.

"It's been a pretty reliable airplane," Vickers said. "Aerodynam-ically it bounces around a bit," he added. "It wobbles a lot in the air." He speculated that the accident was unrelated to the plane's stealth technology or its age, but involved "the mechanics of flying the plane." There could be a fault in the electrical system, or software or controls could have become stuck, he said. Franklin C. "Chuck" Spinney, a military aircraft analyst for the Department of Defense, said that unlike most airplanes, which have a single aileron a flap on the back of a wing that makes the plane rise or fall on that side the F-117 has two.

One is inboard, or close to the fuselage, the other is outboard. Spinney speculated that if the plane lost its inboard aileron, it could be that the surface had been exposed to exhaust from the engine and, because it is made of composites instead of metal, suffered a heat-related fracture. If that were the case, he said, the whole fleet would have to be assessed to determine whether the problem could recur. Spinney also noted that the plane's poor aerodynamics cause it to fall quickly from the sky instead of gliding the way a conventional plane might. That quality is a result of designing for stealth.

Pilot praised Knight, the pilot, drew praise yesterday from Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, who said "to watch film of him waiting until the final moment before ejecting is truly a tribute to the courage and dedication" exhibited every day by Air Force fliers around the world. Cohen, speaking in Washington to the Air Force Association, cited the pilot's efforts as part of a long line of heroic deeds stretching from World War II to the F-117 pilots who "eliminated Saddam Hussein's eyes and ears" during Desert Storm. Sun staff writer Greg Schneider contributed to this article. accidents Plane, from Page 1a of the single-seat plane, Maj.

Bryan Knight, was released in good condition from a hospital at Andrews Air Force Base after being treated for what an Air Force spokesman called "amazingly minor ne.ck and back injuries." Officials said Knight, who ejected from the falling plane, would not speak publicly at least until he had been interviewed by investigators. The crash occurred in midafter-noon less than a half-mile from Martin State Airport, where about 12,000 people had paid $10 to $12 to watch the annual air show sponsored by the Essex-Middle River Chamber of Commerce. The plane crashed into a Chester Road home, setting it on fire, and about a dozen people were slightly injured. Airplane parts recovered The wing that came off was found at the airport, three-quarters of a mile from the crash site, said Col. Michael Wright, who is heading the Air Force Interim Investigation Board.

Other parts of the plane went into the water and have been retrieved, he said. Wright said that the information from the flight data recorder had not yet been processed. He said the interim board would preserve the crash site until the permanent investigatory board, led by Col. Mark Dougherty of Hill Air Force Base, convenes, probably tomorrow. Meanwhile, the Pentagon was probing the mysterious Saturday disappearance and possible a it It 5 sating residents for any damage and has a four-person claims team working on the incident.

The claims officers, working out of the Bowleys Quarters fire house, met with 10 families yesterday and helped them fill out forms, Huxsoll said. "If somebody needs things right away a vehicle or cash we can give them that," Huxsoll said. Commercial crabber Jim Dimick, who lives on Susquehanna Avenue, just wanted to get back to work. He was trying to get near the crash site on Chester Avenue. "My mother lives there.

We keep our truck there," he said. "We're trying to get the truck out so we can make a living." Residents were not the only ones inconvenienced. Terry McVee of Gardenville, out for a boating excursion Sunday with her husband and 5-year-old daughter, said they returned to nearby Long Beach marina about 9 p.m. Sunday but were not allowed to drive out of the neighborhood. They slept on their 31 -foot Trojan and then finally escaped when security personnel from Martin State Airport took them by boat to docks at the airport.

"I'm mad," McVee said, while her husband arranged for a rental car at the Bowleys Quarters fire house. A group of boaters from near Harrisburg, were staying at an area hotel, hoping they would soon be able to get back to their cars at the Long Beach marina. They'd been shuttled from the marina after the crash but unable to return for their belongings. "We have no clothes, no toothbrushes, no nothing," said one of the boaters, Kathy Burciaga. She was wearing a T-shirt and shorts bought at a local store.

She said she'd missed a day's work at her waitress job. Also, she had to arrange for her neighbors to care for Nina, her blind, diabetic dog. The neighbors, she said, had to give the dog another day's dosage of insulin. Meanwhile, authorities worked to keep frustrations in check. "There's nothing much we can do but help the best way we can," said county police Capt.

Jim Johnson, Essex precinct commander, who had been working without sleep since Sunday. "Hopefully, everything will be back to normal soon." Sun staff writer Dail Willis contributed to this article. Crash area 'taken over' by federal government By Joe Nawrozki and Jay Apperson SUN STAFF Bowleys Quarters was turned into an occupied peninsula yesterday as camouflaged Air Force guards, some toting M-16 rifles, prowled the eastern Baltimore County community where a stealth fighter plane crashed during an air show Sunday. "The government has taken over," said Emma Wetzelberger, who had been dining at the Wild Duck Cafe off Bowleys Quarters Road on Sunday and saw authorities detain dozens of boaters in a nearby marina. As the Air Force began looking for clues to the crash, residents and visitors of the placid waterfront community now a "National Defense Area" wondered when their lives would return to normal.

Several hundred feet from the guarded Chester Road location, a smell resembling burned plastic hung in the air. Trees near the downed plane were singed brown. Small pink flags marked where parts of the exploding aircraft fell. A team from Andrews Air Force Base was scheduled to spray a nontoxic coating onto the remains of the stealth fighter to keep the smeD of the aircraft's burned skin to a minimum, an Air Force official said. The area bristled with security.

While armed Air Force personnel patrolled the land, Baltimore County police in a Zodiac boat blocked the mouth of Frog Mortar Creek, eyeing people through binoculars. On Susquehanna Avenue, a small squad of county police officers stopped motorists. If the drivers couldn't prove they lived in the neighborhood, police many of whom had worked through the night wearily, yet pleasantly, sent the visitors back. About a dozen families had been evacuated from a block of Chester Road after the crash. Many spent Sunday night with relatives; three families were placed in area hotels, said officials from the Central Maryland chapter of the American Red Cross.

Second Lt. David Huxsoll, an Air Force spokesman, said the Air Force is responsible for compen Eft COB GffiU I) if xr uek ter mmm Leek for Yeur Csntt Card No purchatt tccuary. im Mumbcrs April 20, 1982: Unspecified accident during a production acceptance flight. No location given. July 11, 1986: Crash near Bakersfield, Calif.

Pilot killed. 0(1 14, 1987: Crash at Nellis Air Force Base range, Nevada. Pilot killed. Aug. 4, 1992: Crash at La Luz, New Mexico.

Pilot ejected. April 5, 1995: Aircraft caught fire on landing. Pilot escaped. May 10, 1995: Crash near Zuni, N.M. Pilot killed.

May 1, 1997: Nose gear failed during landing. Aircraft is being repaired. Julie 4, 1997: Brakes failed and landing gear collapsed as plane was leaving runway. Aircraft is being repaired. Sept 14, 1997: Crash in Baltimore County.

Plane breaks apart In midair, crashes into home in Middle River. Pilot ejects safely. Source: U.S. Air Force Tetfsv's Pmi. Every Sunday ia Tht Sun.

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