"Mike Marron" wrote in message
news
Truax Jet Crashes; Pilot Safe

PORTAGE -- A Dagger F-102 jet from Truax Field crashed and exploded in
a wooded swamp north of here today, minutes after the pilot, 1st Lt.
Robert Marron, 29, jumped to safety.

The plane crashed about 10 miles from the spot where Marron's
parachute landed. The Air Force put up a security guard around
the wreckage this afternoon. The plane crashed in a sparsely populated
area on the Marquette-Columbia County line.

An Air Force spokesman at Truax Field said the plan suffered
"mechanical difficulties" during a two-plane flight. The spokesman
said Marron stayed with the plane until he had guided it away from
populous areas then bailed out.

The Air Force spokesman indicated that the plane was armed and
probably caused a tremendous explosion when it crashed into the swamp.

An eyewitness, Gary Stevens, was plowing about a quarter mile away,
ran across the swamp and arrived at the plane, "just as the pieces
stopped smouldering." He said that the plane exploded "like a small
atomic bomb" when it hit the ground and that when he reached the scene
"there wasn't a piece of the plane so big you couldn't hold it in your
hand." Stevens watched the pilot come down and said later that he
"just got there when the pilot walked over to me."

Truax Field immediately sent a team to the scene to disarm and
retrieve the armaments and to take wreckage back to Madison where
investigators will attempt to determine the cause of the fire.

Marron, a pilot, with the 325th fighter interceptor squadron, has been
stationed at Truax since he graduated from pilot school in 1957.

Some of the details in this don't exactly gel together:
"plane crashed about 10 miles from [where]... parachute landed",
"plowing a quarter mile [from the crash site]",
"watched the pilot come down",
"just got there when the pilot walked over to me."

OK, the pilot ejects and comes down ten miles from the crash
site but is watched coming down by someone a quarter mile
from the crash site. This person, a quarter mile from the crash,
runs to the site and meets the pilot who gets there at about the
same time or even a little before. Granted running through
swamps is slow business but don't you suspect the parachute
came down a tad closer to the plane than ten miles?