Tag: accident
Two Navy Fighter Jets Crash In Western Pacific; 1 Pilot Missing

Two Navy Fighter Jets Crash In Western Pacific; 1 Pilot Missing

By W.J. Hennigan, Tribune Washington Bureau

Two Navy F/A-18 fighter jets crashed after taking off from the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson while operating at sea in the western Pacific Ocean.

One of the pilots was quickly located and brought aboard the carrier for medical attention. Search efforts continue for the second pilot. No names were released.

The guided-missile cruiser Bunker Hill, guided-missile destroyer Gridley, and helicopters are scouring the ocean in the hunt.

The cause of Friday’s crashes are under investigation.

The Carl Vinson carrier is operating in the Navy’s 7th Fleet area of responsibility, described as the “Indo-Asia-Pacific region.”

In addition to carrier and expeditionary strike groups that deploy to the region, there are 23 ships forward deployed to U.S. facilities in Japan and Guam.

The Navy said the two F/A-18C Hornets have not been recovered. The “C” models made by McDonnell Douglas Corp., now owned by Boeing Co., were first delivered to the military in 1989.

The single-seat jet belonged to Strike Fighter Squadron 94 based at Naval Air Station Lemoore, which is about 40 miles south of Fresno.

The F/A-18 is a twin-engine fighter jet that has been a fixture on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers since 1983. The plane is flown by the Blue Angels, the Navy’s flying aerobatic team.

The aircraft’s fuselage sections are manufactured by Northrop Grumman Corp. in Los Angeles, in a 1-million-square-foot facility on Aviation Boulevard, about a mile south of Los Angeles International Airport.

U.S. Navy F/A-18s have crashed at least five times this year, including these two incidents.

Photo via WikiCommons

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‘Chicago Fire’ Actress Molly Glynn Killed By Falling Tree

‘Chicago Fire’ Actress Molly Glynn Killed By Falling Tree

By Nina Metz and Alexandra Chachkevitch, Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO –‘Chicago Fire’ actress Molly Glynn died Saturday, a day after she was hit by a falling tree while biking on a north suburban forest preserve trail, officials and Glynn’s husband said.

Glynn, who lived in Rogers Park, Illinois, was pronounced dead at 12:45 p.m. at Evanston NorthShore Hospital, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office.

Glynn, 46, was riding her bike about 3 p.m. Friday with her husband, fellow theater actor Joe Foust, when the pair were caught in the fast-moving afternoon storm, Foust said in a Facebook message. Heavy winds uprooted a tree onto the path where she was riding in Erickson Woods near Northfield, authorities said.

Foust, 45, said he and Glynn would bike frequently together. On Friday, they were riding on their favorite biking trail, the North Branch, and were about 25 miles into the ride, heading south on the trail, when the weather suddenly changed around 3 p.m. as they approached Willow Road.

“It was harsh and quick,” said Foust, who has been married to Glynn for about four years.

Glynn, who was riding behind Foust, yelled that the two should take cover. A split second later, Foust said he heard a loud crack and saw a tree fall down behind him in the rear-view mirror of his bicycle. One of the branches hit Foust’s back, but he said he is doing fine.

He said Glynn wore a helmet.

Foust said it took the forest preserve police about 20 minutes before they found them. He said he tried calling 911 several times before he could get through, likely because of weather.
He said he believed a strong wind was responsible for uprooting the tree that killed his wife.

Foust said Glynn leaves behind two teenage boys, Chance, 17, and Declan, 13.

Foust, who first met Glynn at the Chicago Shakespeare theater in 1990s, described her as funniest, greatest person he has ever met.

“We really loved working together,” he said.

Glynn over the years has been a regular at some of Chicago’s most renowned theaters, including Steppenwolf, Writers, Next, Chicago Shakespeare, and Northlight, where she appeared in “Tom Jones” last winter. Her TV credits include “Boss” on Starz and NBC’s “Chicago Fire,” in which she played an emergency room doctor.

Chicago Tribune reporter Liam Ford contributed to this report.

Photo via WikiCommons

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Communication Errors Cited In Friendly-Fire Deaths In Afghanistan

Communication Errors Cited In Friendly-Fire Deaths In Afghanistan

By W.J. Hennigan, Tribune Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON — Communication errors by troops on the ground and in the air led to the deaths of five American soldiers and one Afghan during a June battle with insurgents in southern Afghanistan, a Pentagon investigation concluded in a report released Thursday.

In one of the deadliest friendly-fire incidents of the nearly 13-year war, soldiers failed to follow established procedures for relaying their position to an aircraft flying over them, the U.S. Central Command found. Nor did the crew of the Air Force B-1 bomber follow required steps to ensure it knew where ground troops were before releasing a pair of bombs that hit their position.

“Though this was a challenging set of circumstances, had the team executed standard tactics, techniques, and procedures and communicated effectively, this tragic incident was avoidable,” Air Force Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Harrigian said in the nearly 300-page report, which was partially redacted before its release under the Freedom of Information Act.

“The key members executing the close air-support mission collectively failed to effectively execute the fundamentals, which resulted in poor situational awareness and improper target identification,” he said.

Few details of the June 9 incident were released at the time, as coalition officials notified soldiers’ families and investigators tried to determine what happened.

The fateful operation, led by Afghans with support from U.S. special forces, was intended to disrupt insurgents and improve security for polling stations before Afghanistan’s presidential runoff election.

The troops came under fire about 7:30 p.m. as they prepared to return to base. They climbed to a ridgeline to gain an advantage against the insurgents who were shooting at them.

But the soldiers did not properly communicate their position to the B-1 bomber crew, which was flying at an altitude of about 12,000 feet providing “close air support,” the report says. Aircrew members mistook muzzle flashes from the U.S. troops on the ridgeline as insurgent fire.

One of the soldiers, Staff Sgt. Scott R. Studenmund, 24, of Pasadena, California, had an infrared strobe light affixed to the back of his helmet, which was intended to notify friendly forces of their location. The strobe cannot be seen by the naked eye but can be detected by a heat-seeking sensor.

The sensor pods on the B-1 aren’t capable of detecting the infrared strobes, however, and the pilots’ night-vision glasses can detect strobes only at limited ranges, the report says.

The B-1 targeted the ridgeline and dropped two bombs, killing all the soldiers: Studenmund; Staff Sgt. Jason A. McDonald, 28, of Butler, Georgia.; Spc. Justin R. Helton, 25, of Beaver, Ohio; Cpl. Justin R. Clouse, 22, of Sprague, Washington; Pvt. Aaron S. Toppen, 19, of Mokena, Illinois; and Afghan Sgt. Gulbuddin Ghulam Sakhi.

About 30,000 U.S. troops remain in Afghanistan, most of whom are special forces who still conduct regular ground operations in the area of the deadly incident. The Pentagon plans to have just 9,800 troops there by the beginning of 2015.

AFP Photo/Brendan Smialowski

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After Uzi Death, Gun Ranges Debate Safest Way To Teach Kids To Shoot

After Uzi Death, Gun Ranges Debate Safest Way To Teach Kids To Shoot

By Cindy Carcamo, Los Angeles Times

TUCSON, Ariz. — The accidental death of an instructor at an Arizona shooting range, killed while teaching a 9-year-old girl to fire a fully automatic Uzi, has touched off a national debate on whether children should be given access to such weapons.

But among those who enjoy and teach the use of firearms, a different question has emerged: What’s the proper way to teach children about guns?

Whether a child should be shooting any sort of gun is a decision for each family to make, said Butch Jensen, an instructor for 10 years at Southeast Regional Park Shooting Range on the outskirts of Tucson. The key, he said, is training. A gun is a tool, and like any tool — be it a circular saw or a kitchen knife — requires proper instruction, he said.

“It was clear that she was a beginner, and you don’t start a beginner in that type of firearm,” said Jensen, who watched a widely circulated video of the fatal lesson. “If you want to learn how to run Indy cars, you don’t start at Indy.”

Charles Vacca, 39, of Lake Havasu City was shot Monday at the Bullets and Burgers outdoor range in White Hills, in northern Arizona, about 60 miles south of Las Vegas.

The video shows the 9-year-old girl, clad in pink shorts with a braid in her hair, lose control of the weapon shortly after Vacca, who stood to her left, showed her how to use it. The fatal shot is not shown. The names of the girl and her parents have not been released. The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, the state’s workplace safety agency, is investigating. The Mohave County Sheriff’s Office has said it will not file charges.

The range where Jensen works is one of three owned and operated by Pima County Natural Resources, Parks and Recreation Department. The range does not rent firearms and does not allow full automatic fire.

There is no age requirement for shooting at the range, and children seem to visit it most weekends. Children under 16 must be closely supervised by a legal guardian or parent, though those adults need not be certified instructors, Jensen said.

There were no children present Thursday morning at the outdoor, desertlike facility, where marksmen fire toward a large dirt berm. Blake Carrington took aim at a paper target with the black and blue silhouette of a person. Brass bullet casings bounced back behind him. Above him was a sign: “Safety is no accident.”

Carrington, who serves in the Air Force, has taught his 10-year-old daughter to shoot a .22 rifle.

“I personally would never give my child a fully automatic weapon,” he said. “I feel terrible for that little girl having to live with that.”

Carrington said he was torn about whether gun access laws should be stricter for children. “That’s the thing about guns,” he said. “They will do exactly what the human tells them to do. Poor decision making is what gets us.”

Federal law prohibits children under 18 from possessing a firearm. However, there is no federal law preventing children’s access to guns.

Arizona is one of 21 states with no law restricting gun access to children under 18, as long as there is adult supervision, said Lindsey Zwicker, staff attorney with the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Currently, 28 states and the District of Columbia have laws governing children’s access to firearms. Connecticut passed a law that prohibits children under 16 from handling a machine gun at a shooting range. The law was passed after an 8-year-old Connecticut boy died at a Massachusetts gun expo in 2008 after losing control of the Uzi he was firing.

“When things like this happen, we do draw our attention to the law,” Zwicker said. “People are talking and looking to see where there are weaknesses in the law, and there is discussion on what can be done to prevent this in the future.”

Standing near Carrington at the range Thursday was Tom, a gun enthusiast who worries the fatal accident will provide fodder to gun control activists.

“Anti-gun people will exploit it into mass hysteria about kids and guns,” said Tom, a 66-year-old attorney who didn’t want to give his full name out of concern it could affect his line of work.

Tom, who practiced with an M1 Garand Rifle, said he shoots for sport and to exercise his Second Amendment rights. “I don’t think you should keep kids away from firearms,” he said. “This shouldn’t keep people from taking their kids to the range.”

Still, Tom said he could not fathom why adults allowed the 9-year-old girl to shoot an Uzi. “I don’t know what they were thinking,” he said. “My personal opinion is someone under 15 years of age playing with a submachine weapon is not a good idea.”

Photo: Rob Bixby via Flickr

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