January 30, 1996
Web posted at: 2:30 p.m. EST
NASHVILLE, Tennessee (CNN) -- The pilot of the Navy fighter jet that crashed and killed him and four other people Monday was at the controls of another plane that went down in April.
Lieutenant Commander John Stacy Bates, 33, was flying the F-14 fighter jet last year that crashed at sea, said a naval spokesman at the Mirimar Naval Air Station near San Diego, where Bates was based. Monday's crash in a Nashville neighborhood also killed a crew member and three residents.
The F-14 has had an "unusual number of mishaps"
-- Vice Admiral Brent Bennitt, U.S. Navy
Bates' VF 213 fighter squadron, the "Fighting Blacklions," was grounded Monday for at least 24 hours as the military investigated the crash. The squadron has had four accidents in the last 16 months, said Vice Admiral Brent Bennitt, the Navy's commander for Pacific Fleet aviation units. (179K AIFF sound or 179K WAV sound)
But other F-14's were not being grounded, Bennitt said, despite "an unusual number of mishaps." (170K AIFF sound or 170K WAV sound)
Monday's crash was the 30th for an F-14 since 1991. One of those accidents was the October 1994 crash that killed Lieutenant Kara Hultgreen, one of the first women to qualify for a Navy combat aviation assignment.
But Bennitt said the Navy's primary air-to-air combat plane has a lower accident rate when compared to other older Navy aircraft. The F-14, built by Grumman, was introduced in the Navy in the 1970s and is no longer being manufactured.
In the April incident, Bates was on maneuvers involving the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln when he lost control of his F-14 and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. He and the radar intercept officer ejected. The aircraft was lost. After a review, Bates was recommended fully qualified for return to flight status, said Commander Gregg Hartung, a Navy spokesman.
On Monday, Bates's jet went down 2.5 miles south of Nashville International Airport, just minutes after taking off for Miramar on a training mission. The Navy said the plane was not carrying any missiles, rockets or bombs.
Elmer Newsom, 66, his wife, Ada, 63, and a friend, Ewing T. Wair, 53, were killed when the plane hit their house in the Luna Heights subdivision. Its fuel turned the house into a huge fireball, and flames engulfed vacant homes on both sides. Also killed was radar interceptor officer Lieutenant Graham Alden Higgins, 28, originally from Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.
A naval investigative team was combing through charred wreckage. The crash scene was blocked off but onlookers were plentiful.
"The plane is in parts all over the place," one man said. "You can't even make out a whole plane."
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