St. Petersburg Times December 13, 2001
Crew is fine after U.S. B-1B crashes at sea
Times wires
WASHINGTON - An Air Force B-1B bomber involved in the Afghanistan campaign crashed into the Indian Ocean on Wednesday, but its four crew members were rescued in good condition after two hours in a warm, calm sea.
The supersonic aircraft went into the ocean about 30 miles north of Diego Garcia, the island with a British base from which many air raids on Afghanistan have originated, the Pentagon said. The pilot, Capt. William Steele, later told reporters the craft had not been hit by hostile fire but had suffered "multiple malfunctions" that made it impossible to handle. About 15 minutes after declaring an emergency, and while trying to maneuver the bomber back to Diego Garcia for a landing, the crew members realized they had no choice but to bail out, Steele said. And so they did, from about 15,000 feet, as their explosive ejection seats worked as designed.
Not that the exit was gentle. "I will say that going through an ejection like that is about the most violent thing I've ever felt," he said. "We're all pretty bruised up and have some cuts. But overall, we're doing pretty well."
Steele said that the four men landed well apart, and that he at first could see only one other crew member. But the men had radios and tracking devices, and eventually they were hauled aboard a boat launched by the USS Russell, a destroyer that had been sent to the crash area, Pentagon officials said.
The crash was the first of a bomber in the Afghan campaign since it began Oct. 7. The Pentagon said the plane crashed around 10:30 p.m. local time, or 11:30 a.m. Eastern. Lt. Dan Manetzke, who was in charge of the boat that plucked the men from the water, said the rescue took place early today, local time.
The most recent previous B-1B crash, in 1998, occurred when a fire in the cockpit instrument panel shut down the plane's power over Kentucky. All four crew members ejected safely.
An Air Force data sheet on the kind of airplane that crashed (specifically, a B-1B Lancer) says there are just over 90 in service. The craft, which has a ceiling of just over 30,000 feet and can travel at more than 900 mph, costs more than $ 200-million each.
The plane, ordered by President Richard Nixon in 1970, was designed for terrain-hugging missions 200 feet off the ground to evade enemy radar and deliver nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union. President Jimmy Carter canceled development in 1977 but President Ronald Reagan resumed development and production in 1981.
In a cost-saving move, the Air Force leadership and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made plans before the war on terrorism to cut the B-1B operational fleet by one-third, to 60 warplanes.
"It's not stealthy," Rumsfeld complained to Congress in August. "It's designed for the Cold War. It has been headed toward expensive obsolescence."
Yet B-1B bombers based at Diego Garcia have been carrying out an average of four sorties a day, enabling the B-1Bs and the B-52s based there to deliver about 5,000 tons of bombs - or 70 percent of the total - against targets in Afghanistan since military operations began Oct. 7.
The B-1B alone can deliver 24 satellite-guided precision guided bombs that give the warplane's weapons officer the option to redirect the weapon against another target during the bomb's 15-mile path to the ground.
A single B-1B dropped 10 precision-guided bombs on a compound near the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar in November as senior leaders of the al-Qaida terrorist network and the Taliban gathered.
John Pike, a veteran military analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said the loss of the B-1B highlighted the workhorse role of a venerable warplane operating without fanfare.
"What's so curious about this war is that the B-1B has dropped so much of the overall ordnance in Afghanistan but it's not showing up on television," Pike said. "We only see the contrail of the day from the B-52."
Critics, however, said Afghanistan has posed little challenge and has not provided the kind of adversary that U.S. aircraft are likely to face elsewhere or in the future.
"The B-1 has finally found an adversary it can compete with: a country that is totally defenseless," said Loren Thompson, defense policy analyst with the Lexington Institute, a conservative think thank that has been pushing to have more B-2 stealth bombers built.
"Although it is performing reasonably well, Afghanistan has no air defenses."
B-2s, which must fly halfway around the world from their base in Missouri to reach Afghanistan, have not been used since the opening days of the air campaign. The B-2's ability to evade radar is no longer needed since there is little air defense left.
Copyright 2001 Times Publishing Company
