Miami Herald
June 3, 2005
Pilots, Book Blamed In Jet Crash
A Navy report blamed a new Blue Angels pilot, his instructor and an outdated manual for a December crash. The pilot was rescued in good condition.
PENSACOLA (AP) -- A Navy report blames two Blue Angels pilots and an outdated flight manual for a crash that destroyed one of the precision flying team's F/A-18 Hornet jets, valued at $18 million.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 training flight, was completing a split S maneuver when his jet hit the water. The impact caused 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 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.
Steelman kept the plane flying and tried to make an emergency landing at Pensacola Naval Air Station, where the Blue Angels are based. He was forced to eject because the plane was rapidly losing altitude, 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, stated in the report that Steelman should remain with the team. The pilot and the Navy would benefit from lessons learned, Mayer wrote.
The report said Lt. Cmdr. Craig Olson, of Kirkland, Wash., another Blue Angels pilot who had briefed Steelman on the maneuver, contributed to the crash. It said he should have clarified the maneuver and been more assertive when he noticed Steelman deviate from the plan.
The report recommended no punishment for Olson because he was not intentionally negligent. The report also recommended 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 made by a Blue Angels spokesman a day after the crash that no aerobatics had been involved.
