The Virginian-Pilot May 15, 2008
Stray Navy Bomb Ignites Florida Blaze
An Oceana-based Navy fighter jet is being blamed for setting a large fire Tuesday in a national forest in central Florida after a bomb it dropped missed its target.
About 257 acres of woodland and swamp in the Ocala National Forest burned after the F/A-18 Super Hornet dropped a 500-pound laser-guided bomb that hit a mile from the target, the Navy said in a news release Wednesday.
Officials at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station said the incident is under investigation.
The fighter was conducting training over the Pine-castle Impact Range, but the bomb fell far east of it. The area where it hit is uninhabited, and there are no structures nearby, the Navy said.
According to GlobalSecurity.org, the Pinecastle range is the only place on the East Coast where the Navy can train with live munitions. It drops nearly 20,000 bombs a year at the site, a few hundred of which are live.
The Navy uses about 6,000 acres of the 382,000-acre national forest under a permit from the U.S. Forest Service.
Officials with the Atlantic Fleet Naval Air Force could not be reached for comment late Wednesday.
Mike Drayton, a fire management officer with the U.S. Forest Service, told the Ocala Star Banner that the fire was contained. He told the newspaper that the fire burned 257 acres.
The jet that dropped the bomb was from Strike Fighter Squadron 213, the "Fighting Blacklions," based in Virginia Beach. The unit is attached to the carrier Theodore Roosevelt.
The name of the pilot was not immediately released.
On Oct. 30, 2007, a training bomb fell accidentally from a Navy plane in California on the same day one dropped near a busy road in Virginia Beach. Both incidents involved F/A-18 Hornets and an inert, 10-pound bomb called BDU-48.
The bomb, which releases only smoke on impact, fell into a commercial area along London Bridge Road. No one was injured, and there was little damage. The plane was returning to Oceana from a North Carolina bombing range.
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