By Calvin Palmer
A Marine Corps pilot who ejected from a crippled fighter over a San Diego neighborhood “screamed in horror” when he saw the jet crash into a home, according to documents released yesterday.
In a statement to investigators, Lt Dan Neubauer described how he struggled to control the malfunctioning F/A-18D Hornet in the minutes before the crash that killed four people on the ground and destroyed two homes in the University City neighborhood on December 8.
Neubauer was on a training flight from the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln when he was forced to shut down one engine because of mechanical trouble. He was instructed to bypass a coastal Navy base that offered an approach over water to fly instead over San Diego to the inland Marine Corps Air Station Mirimar.
When the plane’s second engine failed short of the runway, Neubauer cursed and then attempted to direct the jet away from homes.
“I knew I had to get out. I pulled the nose up a little bit and then reached down between my legs for the ejection handle,” he wrote. “The canopy blew and then after what seemed like an eternity I was ejected.”
Dangling below his parachute, he looked down to trace the jet’s plunge.
“It had gone right into a house. I screamed in horror when I realized what had just happened,” Neubauer wrote.
The military disciplined 13 members of the Marines and Navy after the crash, which was blamed on mechanical problems and a string of bad decisions that led Neubauer to bypass a potentially safe landing at Naval Air Station North Island in Coronado.
Neubauer was first ordered to go to North Island after his engine trouble started. He was about 20 miles away from the base when that changed, and he was directed to go to Miramar.
According to a military investigation, officers at Miramar cleared the pilot to go to the inland base, favoring Miramar’s longer runway and assuming the pilot was closer to the base.
At one point, Neubauer appeared to be puzzled when ordered to go to Miramar rather than North Island. “I repeated the information to make sure that I understood. They replied affirmative.”
Nearing Miramar, “I felt the aircraft performance degrade and noticed the engine noise winding down. … I moved the throttle forward as I cursed and noticed it didn’t do anything,” he wrote.
He recalled possibly trying to restart the first engine but quickly realized “it was to no avail”.
“I was about to transmit that I had lost my left engine but my left generator dropped off-line and I lost all my electrical power.”
Moments later he ejected.
Four members of a Korean family were killed in their home — Young Mi Yoon, 36; her daughters Grace, 15 months, and Rachel, 2 months; and her mother Suk Im Kim, 60. Kim was visiting from South Korea to help her daughter move across town and adjust to the arrival of her second child.
The investigators’ report criticized Neubauer for failing to challenge more forcefully the decision to fly inland to Miramar.
[Based on a report by newsday.com.]
