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In two weeks, the Air Force will send a ship 40 miles off the Northern California coast and one mile deep to retrieve the wreckage of King-56, a Portland-based C-130 plane that crashed in November 1996, killing 10 reservists. But the salvage effort won't go far enough to please some of the crew's widows. The Air Force--which initially brought up just 10 percent of the wrecked plane, including one engine--has said it will bring up only one more engine, not all three that remain on the ocean floor, even though the engines lay in plain sight, near one another, on flat terrain. "We don't think we'll get any commitment to bring the engines up," says Gayle Schott, widow of the plane's pilot. At issue are two competing theories about the crash. The Air Force believes an air bubble in the fuel system and crew error combined to cause the disaster. The widows believe malfunctioning devices connected to the engines, and not the crew, were to blame. The widows have made numerous requests, both personally and through their lawyers, that the Air Force retrieve the engines. Sen. Ron Wyden has made similar requests, as has Bernard Loeb, aviation safety director of the National Transportation Safety Board. Lt. Gen. David Vesely told Wyden three weeks ago that the Air Force's primary focus will be on the fuel tanks and gauges it believes are behind the cause of the crash. Other items may be recovered "depending on the circumstances," according to Air Force spokeswoman Ellen Schirmer. "As we begin recovery of the key parts, we will analyze them," explains Schirmer. If on-the-spot analysis proves that a particular part was the cause of a malfunction, then the Air Force will stop salvage. "On the other hand," Schirmer adds, "recovery and analysis of all key parts may not reveal the cause.... If so, it may be decided that salvage efforts should be extended." The widows think they have compelling new evidence to change the Air Force's priorities. Through the Freedom of Information Act, they obtained a memo from Allison Engine Co. that they say supports their theory. The memo suggests that the temperature datum amplifier--a piece the widows suspect of causing King-56's four engines to fail--needs more tests because it may cause unexpected fuel and power loss. The widows, and the expert investigators hired by their attorneys, want to bring up all three remaining engines to see what position certain valves were in. They believe the valve positions, which are controlled by the temperature datum amplifier, may hold the answer to King-56's sudden and total loss of power to all four engines. Given the Allison Engine memo, which went to the Air Force October 24, 1997, the widows wonder why salvaging the engines isn't a top priority. "I don't understand it," says Schott. "It looks like they want to substantiate the crew-error theory." Nor can they fathom why the Air Force did not mention the memo and its recommendations in the follow-up investigation of King-56 last year. The omissions make the widows suspicious. "Once again they're omitting vital factual evidence...and acting as if these recommendations were never made," says Laura Wellnitz, widow of the plane's navigator. "To omit that is unconscionable." Responding to Willamette Week's questions about the widows' concerns, the Air Force maintains it did review Allison's 1997 memo. But the Air Force did not follow the memo's recommendations to carry out new tests because it insists that the temperature datum system cannot cause complete four-engine power failure. The Air Force instead has advanced the so-called "bubble" theory, which blames the crash on a quirk in the fuel-supply system and on negligence of the crew. Many of the crew's family members consider the bubble theory implausible because it requires a sequence of improbable coincidences and glaring oversights by the King-56 crew. The widows see plenty of reason to keep pushing: C-130s keep having mysterious power losses. On March 23, a C-130 took off from McChord Air Force Base in Washington, got out over the Pacific Ocean and experienced a sudden four-engine power loss. The crew executed emergency procedures, improved since the King-56 crash, and the engines returned to power. On May 1, a C-130 from a Georgia base was cruising at 18,500 feet when it lost power in all four engines for a second or two. "The situation corrected itself prior to the crew's performing the recently changed bold-face checklists," says an Air Force memo. The plane has been impounded and its flight data recorder was sent to the Air Force Safety Center in New Mexico for analysis. "The results are not known at this time," says the Air Force memo. The widows worry that the next C-130 power loss will be fatal. That's why they want the engines retrieved. "Not only could it help ensure the safety of the C-130 fleet, but it also could repair damage done to the reputations of the crew," says Schott. "It's easy to blame crew members when they are no longer here to defend themselves." |
