Was 1981 NH Bomber Crash Pilot Error?

HISTORY MATTERS  (Part 2 of 2)

The official USAF Mishap Report determined that the 1981 crash of an FB-111A was caused by "incorrect" actions of the pilot. But questions still linger. Could mechanical failure have caused the near catastrophic accident in a crowded housing complex in Portsmouth, NH?

 

 

 

 

(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second of a two-part Herald report with extensive research provided by Jack Goterch of Derry, NH.)

CLICK HERE for FB-11A Part One 
ALSO SEE exclusive amateur photos

USAF Mishap Report Suggests Pilot Was Incorrect

There is no smoking gun. No indisputable evidence contradicts the US Air Force conclusion that pilot Captain Peter Carellas, then 33, was technically responsible for the FB-111A that slammed into a wooded area just yards away from a crowded Portsmouth, NH housing complex on January 30, 1981.

No one was killed or seriously injured, although three apartment buildings at the former Mariner’s Village (now Spinnaker Point and Osprey Landing) were destroyed or heavily damaged by fire. Repairs and reparations were quickly handled and the debris quickly cleaned up. The ejection module that carried the pilot and navigator to safety 1,750 feet away from the crash site was immediately trucked to nearby Pease Air Force Base.

The base has since closed and the FB-111A has been retired. Three reports – a mishap report, a safety report and a legal report were completed. Only the first two have since been made public. The testimony in the USAF JAG (Judge Advocate General) Legal Report could not be obtained.

Almost three decades later, the near catastrophic crash is largely forgotten. No memorial marks the spot. But nagging questions remain about the engines, the mission, the flight path, the performance of the bomber, and the sequence of events that caused two seasoned crewmen to ditch a $10.5 million bomber into the heart of a crowded city. One and a half minutes after impact a Boston tracking station reported that "Salic 16," the code name for the bomber, was missing.

"I’ve lost him," the controller announced.

"O.K.," the Pease tower responded two seconds later. "We’ve just had a report that an FB111 crashed three miles east of Pease. We believe it might be him."

CONTINUE FB-111A Crash

 

What went wrong?

According to the official USAF Mishap Report, finally released to the public in 2006, pilot Carellas made choices during a "STALL SPIN" mishap that resulted in the crash. Carellas and weapons system operator (WSO) Major Ronald Reppe, then 39, were returning from a routine "single ship sortie". Their Function Check Flight (FCF) ended with a crash at roughly 2:56 pm on a clear and sunny winter afternoon. The report summary notes that: "Because of preflight maintenance delays, the low-level navigation and bombing practice was canceled prior to takeoff." The delay, although not clearly spelled out in the mishap report made available, was due to the installation of two new jet engines. Carellas and Reppe were testing them in flight for the first time.

The legal portion of the USAF report, according to news coverage at the time, seems to have exonerated the pilot of any legal responsibility. That report, however, has not been made public and attempts to obtain it for this article were unsuccessful.

The Mishap Report includes a brief nine-step explanation of what went wrong. First, "the aircraft entered a rapid, unscheduled roll to the left for an undetermined reason." What the pilot did and did not do during the next few seconds caused Carellas to lose control of the bomber. The pilot stopped the roll, but "incorrectly chose to continue the roll left to wings level" the report says. The FB-111A then "departed controlled flight," according to the mishap report, and crashed. Navigator Reppe pulled the lever that ejected the crew escape module less than 10 seconds before the unmanned bomber struck near the apartment complex.

Pilot Peter Carellas had served at Pease just over four years at the time of the accident, logging 2,670 flight hours, 740 of them in the FB-111A and many more in the B-52. Navigator Reppe had served 2,665 hours as a "right seater" in the FB-111A and FB-111. Both pilots had combat experience, presumably in Southeast Asia. Although Carellas was found at fault for the Portsmouth "mishap," he went on to fly with the Air Force for another 14 years and retired with the rank of Lt. Colonel. Reppe was flying again by the time the USAF completed its investigation a few months after the crash.

CONTINUE FB-111A Crash

 

The fire in the sky

A number of eyewitnesses reported seeing the plane on fire before it crashed, suggesting a mechanical failure, rather than pilot error. John Bertrand of Rochester was only 10-years old when he and his friends were leaving the Wentworth School not far from the crash site. They heard a loud noise, looked up, and saw the FB-111A fly over on fire with smoke flying out the back end. Today Bertrand recalls the event "like it was yesterday". He says:

"It flew over the school out toward the [Sea Crest Village] neighborhood and over the high rise bridge, looped around – explosion – they ejected, plane landed in the neighborhood… It was on fire when it flew over the school…I remember watching it fly over on fire because me and 10 of my friends ran as fast as we could to our houses to see if our houses got blown up."

George and Fanny Whitney of Kittery were heading home on Route 236 in Eliot, Maine as they watched the ill-fated bomber in the distance for 15 to 20 seconds. Mr. Whitney, formerly a deputy fire chief at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for 30 years, saw a plane that "appeared to be on fire" off to his right.

"I saw an explosion after that, "Whitney says today. "I saw a lot of smoke first and then an explosion after that, and then something come out of the plane and went up in the air. I thought it was the pilot, and he was coming down in a parachute."

Soon after the event Whitney was called to testify for the Air Force investigators. He spoke for only one or two minutes, he recalls, and was asked very few questions. "My feeling was, well, that they didn’t really care because I was so far away that what I saw wasn’t really what I saw."

In the end, the mishap report concluded that there was "no evidence of an inflight fire." Those who saw flames, according to investigators, likely saw the momentary explosion when the pilot fired his afterburners in hopes of regaining control. Others may have seen flames when the escape capsule ejected. Because different people saw fire coming from the aircraft at different locations and at different times their observations were considered inconclusive. Yet despite the blanket denial, a careful reading of the mishap report turns up a single sooty area that, analysts admitted, might indicate a possible inflight fire.

The horrific "ball of fire" created by the impact made mechanical analysis difficult, if not impossible. The jet fell 4,000 feet almost straight down, dropping like a rock, nose-first into a granite hillside, carrying 15,500 pounds of jet fuel. The blaze was still going when the first firefighters arrived on the scene 11 minutes later.

Many of the wrecked parts of the bomber, the horizontal stabilizer, for example, are listed in the report as "condemned, cause unknown." The condition of many key parts, according to one investigator, "prevented a complete and accurate analysis of a probable cause." Another notation reads: "We are unable to make any analysis based on the available information." The plane’s "black box" containing final recorded details was apparently not recovered, adding to the mystery.

CONTINUE FB-111A Crash

 

 

Two new engines

The fact that two new engines were installed on the crashed FB-111A just one day before the accident receives almost no mention in the mishap report. They appear in a lengthy list that records the date in which parts of the plane were last overhauled. The engines are dated January 29, 1981 with the simple notation "NOT OVERHAULED SINCE NEW".

The brand new Pratt & Witney TF-30-P7 engines, manufactured for General Dynamics, were ruled out as a cause from the earliest moments of the investigation. As a result, and this remains a worrying detail, the engine manufacturers were not part of the recovery and investigation. Both engines.survived the crash, although they were compacted, according to the report to one-quarter their size. When researcher Jack Goterch requested further information for this article, he received the following reply by email from the manufacturer: "The engine was exonerated as a cause of the crash therefore Pratt & Whitney did not participate in the accident investigation." The engines, used only once, cost Uncle Sam $1,735,000, roughly 17% of the total cost of the jet bomber.

Although no evidence indicates any fault in the engines at Portsmouth, their immediate exoneration seems odd in light of the poor track record of the FB-111A. According to amateur web sites fb-111a.net and F-111.net, at least 13 or 14 of the 76 bombers manufactured crashed during routine flights. Accidents, many fatal, occurred in Arizona, Virginia, Texas, Nevada, and Canada with three crashes in Maine and four in Vermont.

"The FB-111A was essentially a project that never lived up to its hopes," says retired Portsmouth Herald editor John Whiteman.

He should know. Whiteman is one of the few civilians who got to see the complex swing-wing bomber perform from the inside. Prior to the 1981 crash, Whiteman took a 3.5-hour ride in a bomber out of Pease AFB. Equipped with an advanced terrain mapping system, the fighter was able to travel below conventional radar at 100 feet above ground. Cruising at 565 mph, the FB-111A could reach speeds of 1,600 mph at 36,000 feet and travel 4,500 miles between fill-ups.

Tapping his personal contacts at Pease in 1981, Whiteman was the first reporter to reveal that the crashed jet bomber was fitted with new engines. Three months later, when the USAF announced the findings of its investigation, Whiteman reported that Carellas and Reppe had been "flight-testing two newly fitted jet engines" when the crash occurred. He also released comments from the legal portion of the report that are not available to the public even today.

Rolling thunder review

The JAG investigative board, as reported by Whiteman in April 1981, did not find pilot Peter Carellas legally responsible. In fact, the board "didn’t pinpoint any cause for the crash," according to the Portsmouth Herald. Carellas testified that the plane exhibited "unusual gyrations".

"I was screaming into my mask, very loudly," Carellas told investigators. "I realized we were coming down." These words were not received by traffic controllers at Pease or by the Boston Air Traffic group located in Nashua, neither of which was aware of the crash until it was reported by civilian observers. Nor does Carellas’ cry for help appear in the transcript in the official mishap report, now in the public domain.

The pilot also told the legal board that the aircraft began "snapping motions in one direction." The activity stopped and appeared to recover, he testified, but the rolling continued. He corrected it by applying right rudder, but was losing altitude. When the plane hit 4,000 feet, unable to regain control and with only seconds to impact, Carellas signaled Reppe to pull the handle that detonated the escaped module.

Researcher Jack Goterch, who spent over a year studying the 1981 crash for this article, has located the capsule (tail #80263) that catapulted Carellas and Reppe to safety. The capsule sits – its story forgotten -- in the vast storage area of The National Museum of the US Air Force in Dayton Ohio. Goterch has suggested that it might be shipped back to Portsmouth for exhibition, and as a reminder of the day the city dodged a deadly bullet.

Goterch says he is still trying to put the pieces together. After studying news reports, official statements, and eyewitness accounts, he keeps coming back to the testimony of John Bertrand, who watched the aircraft looping in the sky directly above when he was a boy. Bertrand said he was "shocked to see the plane fly overhead, turn away toward the river, and then come back to crash near his home.

"The plane itself made the loop," Gorterch suggests, "because of the unscheduled roll to port. That is, it turned itself to the left – more than once. I’ve come to believe that the ailerons that turn the plane were malfunctioning, as they had been throughout the one hour flight. I'd bet my last dollar the problem was in the controls, not the engine – or the pilot."

 

Copyright © 2008 by J. Dennis Robinson with Jack Goterch. All rights reserved.

Robinson is the owner of the popular web site SeacoastNH.com. His latest book is Strawbery Banke: A Seacoast Museum 400 Years in the Making.