Report blames pilots, outdated manual for Blue Angels crash

Report blames pilots, outdated manual for Blue Angels crash

PENSACOLA, Fla. - A Navy report blames two Blue Angels pilots and an
outdated flight manual for a crash that destroyed one of the precision
flying team's F/A-18 Hornet jets, valued at $18 million.

Lt. Ted Steelman, 32, of Star, Idaho, was rescued in good condition
Dec. 1 after his plane crashed into the Gulf of Mexico off Perdido Key,
a barrier island on the Florida-Alabama border.

Steelman, a new team member on a familiarization flight, was completing
a split S maneuver when his jet hit the water, causing structural
damage and a massive engine fire, according to the report obtained
Wednesday by Pensacola television station WEAR-TV.

The maneuver starts with a high performance climb followed by a half
downward loop. An Air Force pilot, Maj. Brison Phillips, was killed
when his F-16 Fighting Falcon crashed doing the same maneuver during a
2000 air show at Kingsville Naval Air Station, Texas.

Steelman managed to keep the plane flying and tried to make an
emergency landing at Pensacola Naval Air Station, where the Blue Angels
are based, but was losing altitude too rapidly and ejected, the report
states.

Spokesmen for the Blue Angels did not immediately return calls seeking
comment. The team left Thursday for a weekend air show at McGuire Air
Force Base, N.J.

Rear Adm. G.E. Mayer, chief of Naval Air Training at Corpus Christi
Naval Air Station, Texas, indicated in the report that Steelman should
remain with the team. The pilot and the Navy would benefit from lessons
learned, Mayer wrote.

The report concluded that Lt. Cmdr. Craig Olson, of Kirkland, Wash.,
another Blue Angels pilot who had briefed Steelman on the maneuver,
contributed to the crash. He should have clarified the maneuver and
been more assertive when he noticed deviations by Steelman, it states.

No punishment was recommended for Olson because he was not
intentionally negligent.

The report also recommends that a flight manual in use for 10 years be
updated because information on the maneuver was "somewhat ambiguous and
potentially misleading."

The report contradicts statements by a Blue Angels spokesman a day
after the crash that no aerobatics had been involved.