Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR) July 17, 2003
Vintage MiG-15 jet pierces fence
Pilot unhurt after plane loses power near runway's edge
By Michael Frazier and Noel E. Ooman
A Korean War-era fighter jet lost power on takeoff, barreled through a fence and crashed Wednesday just outside Little Rock National Airport, Adams Field.
Pilot Tobe Gooden, 59, of Spring, Texas, was not injured in the 4:14 p.m. crash. He was 3,000 feet down the runway and 10 feet off the ground when the MiG-15 fighter shook and began to fail, said John Clabes, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Gooden's MiG-15 was one of only two flying in the United States.
"I feel good, I'm fine," Gooden said as he was being driven from the crash site for an interview with FAA investigators. Crews with the National Transportation Safety Board also were at the site.
Controllers in the airport tower told the FAA that smoke was coming from the plane. The wings wobbled and struck the ground shortly before the crash, controllers said.
Gooden told investigators he knew he was losing power and decided to abort the takeoff, Clabes said.
"The FAA praised the pilot for his decision of putting it back on the ground, otherwise it would have been a fireball," Clabes said. The plane crashed through the fence at the end of the run- way, crossed Roosevelt Road and raked through a field where it dumped about 540 gallons of fuel before crashing in thickets near railroad tracks, Clabes said.
Little Rock police blocked off sections of Roosevelt Road and Frazier Pike for more than two hours as Little Rock firefighters cleared the area and medics examined Gooden.
Gooden, who was traveling to Bloomington, Ind., refueled at Omni Air Charter next to the airport and was cleared for takeoff on the 5,100-foot runway used for private, general aviation aircraft, airport spokesman Philip Launius said. He said the crash did not affect airport operations.
Omni Manager Chris Finkbeiner said his workers admired the vintage aircraft.
"Those are old airplanes," he said. "You never see them anymore. It was different. It was cool."
Gooden, a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, spent 21 years with the Air Force flying fighter jets including the F-4, A-10 and F-16, according to a Web site for aviation shows featuring Gooden.
The site said Gooden and a pilot of a F-86F Sabre stage in mock dog fights at air shows. The next display was slated for today through Sunday in Dayton, Ohio.
According to the site, Gooden was based in Vietnam, Korea, Europe and the United States before he retired in 1987 as a colonel. He now flies a B-737 passenger plane for a commercial airline, the site said.
The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 was the former Soviet Union's first successful jet fighter. Designed to shoot down heavy bombers, it carried one 37 mm and two 23 mm cannons, according to Globalsecurity.org, an Alexandria, Va.-based nonprofit public-policy organization focusing on defense, space and intelligence issues.
MiG fighters began appearing in service in 1949, and by 1952 had been provided to a number of Communist satellite nations, including North Korea.
They made aviation history when they were used in the first all-jet dogfight in history. On November 8, 1950, 1 st Lt. Russell Brown, flying an F-80, shot down a MiG-15.
The plane has a maximum speed of 670 mph.
Wednesday's crash came less than two years after Gooden's colleague, Jimmy Rossi, died after crashing his F-86 in the Dominican Republic. Rossi crashed shortly after he and Gooden took off together after participating in an air show.
Copyright © 2003, Little Rock Newspapers, Inc.
