Reporter-News Archives

Feb. 21 -- Air Force wants secret maps, documents back in bomber crash: MARION, Ky. -- Air Force investigators looking into the crash of a Dyess Air Force Base B-1 bomber in a Kentucky cow pasture want people here to return any top secret documents or maps found strewn among wreckage scattered across 20 acres.

Feb. 21 -- Dyess bombers flying again: Two days after a Dyess Air Force Base B-1B bomber plunged into a Kentucky pasture, base commander Brig. Gen. Mike McMahan took to the skies on a routine training mission.

Feb. 20 -- Marion residents question decision: Citizens of Marion, Ky., are used to military aircraft flying over town, "but most of the time there's somebody up there at the controls," Mayor Mick Alexander said Thursday.

Feb. 20 -- Piece of history gone with "The Hellion": When "The Hellion" crashed and exploded in a Kentucky field Wednesday afternoon, it took a piece of Air Force history with it.

Feb. 20 -- Scene like one from movie to rescuer: To Tom Beverly, it was like the scene from the movie "Red Dawn," where Cuban and Soviet paratroopers invade a small town to launch World War III.

Feb. 20 -- General orders temporary stand down: The skies were quieter than usual over Abilene on Thursday as Dyess Air Force Base's top official temporarily halted all B-1 bomber flights in response to a B-1B crash the day before.

Feb. 20 -- When to eject -- a pilot's difficult decision: WASHINGTON -- When the engine of Navy Cmdr. David Strong's F-8 Crusader exploded above San Diego in 1985, he steered the crippled craft away from a residential area and ejected just before the plane slammed into an empty parking lot.

Feb. 20 -- Investigation into B-1 crash begins: A Dyess Air Force Base B-1 bomber that plowed into a Kentucky pasture on Wednesday was flying at about 20,000 feet when it encountered a major malfunction, base officials said on Thursday.

Feb. 20 -- Ejection system that saved B-1B crew is top-notch: The ejection system that catapulted four crew members of a crashing Dyess Air Force Base B-1B to safety on Wednesday is one of the best, one of its maintainers said on Thursday.

Feb. 20 -- Details begin to emerge of doomed bomber flight: MARION, Ky. (AP) -- In chaos at 20,000 feet, with smoke quickly filling the cockpit, the crew of an Air Force B-1B bomber, call-sign "Dark Zero-Two," made a life-and-death decision to eject from the crippled plane.

Feb. 19 -- LATEST FROM AP: Air Force bomber flies miles after crew ejects, then crashes: MARION, Ky. (AP) - Postman Eddie Hendrix was making his daily neighborhood rounds when a huge fireball lit up the sky above his 300-acre farm. It wasn't his heating tank exploding as he first thought. An unarmed B-1B bomber plummeted into his fields Wednesday, narrowly missing his home and barn and scattering his cattle in terror.

Feb. 19 -- Air Force bomber crashes in Kentucky; all four crew members survive: MARION, Ky. (AP) -- An Air Force B-1B bomber, flying unmanned after its crew ejected safely minutes earlier, plowed into a muddy cow pasture and exploded Wednesday in rural western Kentucky.

The plane barely missed a farmhouse, crashing just four miles from this farming community of 3,300 people. No one was hurt on the ground.

The unmanned, unarmed bomber flew roughly 12 miles after its crew bailed out.

Two crew members walking along the road were picked by a passerby in a car, while another was found walking in a field nearby. The fourth's parachute caught in a tree and he suffered head and neck injuries.

The Air Force said the instructor pilot and instructor weapons officer were both in good condition in a military hospital at Fort Campbell, Ky. The co-pilot and another weapons system officer were reported stable at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tenn.

Feb. 19 -- Dyess-based B-1 crashes in Kentucky field (Scripps Howard News Service) WASHINGTON -- An Air Force B-1B long-range bomber on a routine training mission crashed into an open field in Western Kentucky Wednesday afternoon. All four crew members survived.

The cause of the crash, shortly before 1 p.m. (CST), was unknown, Air Force officials said. The crew members, from Dyess Air Force Base in Abilene, Texas, apparently ejected and were being treated for minor lacerations at Crittenden County Hospital in Marion, Ky., said Marion Police Chief Kenneth Winn.

Feb. 19 -- B-1 was on routine training mission: A Dyess Air Force Base B-1B bomber cut a fiery swath into a Kentucky farm Wednesday, minutes after its four-man crew ejected to safety.

The plane, which had left Dyess earlier in the day, was on a routine round-trip training mission, said Col. Dan Hoile, vice-commander of Dyess' 7th Bomb Wing.

Feb. 19 -- Crash survivor, wife remember what it was like: If anyone knows what was going through the minds of four Dyess Air Force Base crewmen when they ejected from their crippled B-1B bomber Wednesday, it's Bill Price.

Price, a retired Dyess officer who now teaches business at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, was one of the three survivors of America's first B-1B crash in 1987. Three fellow crewmen he had flown with for several years died in that crash.

Feb. 19 -- Dyess still has impressive safety record: Crashes make the headlines, but considering the millions of hours logged by its crews, Dyess Air Force Base still has one of the most impressive safety records in the Air Force.

At one time, Dyess went 30 years without a fatal crash in the area -- a record unheard of in the military.

Feb. 19 -- Internet provides plenty of resources on crash, plane: The Internet provides many resources about the crash, Dyess Air Force Base and the B-1B bomber itself.

Feb. 19 -- "It's a miracle the plane didn't take out half a town": Timothy Barker steered his pickup into a ditch Wednesday as he watched a B-1B bomber soar over the trees and crash in a Kentucky field, a mere 700 feet from a farmhouse.

"It's a miracle those men were saved, and it's a miracle the plane didn't take out half a town," Barker said Monday in a telephone interview from Marion, Ky., hours after a Dyess Air Force Base B-1B bomber went down. "If he kept it from landing in town, that pilot's a hero. A lot of folks could have died."

Feb. 19 -- Crash may heighten opposition to training proposal: SNYDER -- The crash of a B-1B Lancer Wednesday in Kentucky may heighten opposition to a proposed site in West Texas for a bomber training area.

"I hope the crash brings into focus what the Air Force is wanting to do," said Buster Welch, chairman of Citizens Against Lancer. "Clearly, the citizens of our area need to know a lot more about the danger and the scope of these training missions before we're stuck with them for the rest of our lives."

Feb. 19 -- Mail carrier recounts watching crash (EvansvilleCourier): MATTOON, Ky. -- Eddie Hendrix was nearing the end of his rural mail route Wednesday afternoon when he saw a fireball reflected in the rearview mirror of his pickup.

"I thought that looks just like it's at the house," he said, thinking a propane gas tank there might have exploded.

He rushed the two or so miles home to learn a B-1B bomber had crashed into a pasture field about a 100 yards behind his 150-year-old farmhouse.

Feb. 19 -- Witnesses say bomber was flying too low (Paducah Messenger-Inquirer): MARION, Ky. -- When the giant military airplane glided over her head early Wednesday afternoon, the first thought that went through Lynn Wyatt's mind was that it was flying low. Too low.

Feb. 19 -- The B-1 bomber makes a comeback (background piece from December): WASHINGTON -- There was a time when the B-1 bomber was the butt of Johnny Carson's jokes, an extraordinarily expensive aircraft bedeviled by so many problems that, in some quarters of the Pentagon, it became known derisively as the "B-1 Bummer."

Evansville, Ind., Courier coverage: http://www.evansville.net/