Pilot Screams in Horror 
(CNN) -- A pilot who parachuted from his disabled Marine Corps jet last year said he was horrified to see it smash into a California home, newly released documents say. Marine Corps Lt. Dan Neubauer's statements, describing the December crash that killed four family members in a San Diego home, were released Tuesday by military officials.
The four-page document details in technical terms several attempts Neubauer made to keep his crippled F/A-18D from crashing. When it became apparent that the plane was going down, Neubauer parachuted out.
"I looked down to see where my plane had crashed and saw that it had gone right into a house. I screamed in horror when I realized what had just happened," Neubauer said in the document.
Neubauer landed in the backyard of another home and was not injured. The pilot had been trying to reach the nearby Marine Corps Air Station Miramar when he started having problems with his fighter jet.
The jet crashed into Dong Yun Yoon's house, killing his wife, his two young children and his mother-in-law. An unoccupied house was also destroyed.
Days after the incident, Yoon said he did not blame the pilot.
"Please pray for him not to suffer from this accident," Yoon said. "I don't blame him. I don't have any hard feelings. I know he did everything he could."
Could you be this charitable after a military jet crashes into your home and kills your whole family? With cutbacks on everything these days, it makes you wonder how much more will be cut back on when it comes to safety. The Military will probably never tell us exactly what brought the plane down, but you can bet that in part, it was due to cutbacks in maintenance. We are seeing cutbacks in all things, including commercial airline safety. I don't see how it helps us to be any safer in the skies to recruit air traffic controllers right out of high school.
So what can be done these days to be safe in any aspect of life when we're plagued with budget cuts, shoddy foreign workmanship on products, living in a nation of disposable products and little oversight in making sure they're made right? PRAY! Pray you don't get injured or killed by inferior products. It's all you can do at this point.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (3)
at 13:15 on March 25th, 2009
An Air Force F-22 just crash in the desert.
at 16:25 on March 25th, 2009
I wouldn't say inferior, this jet was well designed before any military cut backs or the economic trouble were living in.
at 03:47 on April 14th, 2009
I live in San Diego and was a maintenance tech in VF-21 at miramar and aboard the USS Coral Sea from '79-83. (F-4J/N/S Phantoms with PQS in Fire Control/Avionics, Plane Captain in Line Division, and GSE). As blunt as can be, "**** happens" and it always has and always will. Although it varies by aircraft type (well over half the Harriers were scratched, VS something like the P3 Orion which is ridiculously low in accident rate per hours) today's military aviation community is, again by accident rate, the safest it's ever been. When "**** happens" in the worst way such as landing on a house, it tragically makes big news. They'll get to the bottom of it and correct the problem.
If you're thinking inferior product just figure this is not new. A decade or so before I worked in hangar 1 at miramar, an F-8 crusader on final approach had a problem and the pilot thought it was going down in the buffer zone eastof highway 15 (which is now kearny villa rd) so he punched out thinking the jet would sink and impact harmlessly. I'm a little fuzzy on the details but I guess the ejection sequence moved the throttle forward and the aircraft continued on its own quite a bit and, picking up speed, slammed into hangar one at miramar which had many busy sailors going about their duties. I think it killed 8 or so men and many more were badly burned.
There have been other deaths at or out of miramar as well, including a rather spectacular blue angels practice fatality around 1978, an A-4 was practicing its high speed inverted flyby and impacted the runway right on its canopy at 500 knots. I didn't see the crash but the fuselage was still at miramar's little "boneyard" where we stripped spare parts off of scratched airframes, it was a couple of years later but I looked right in it and in the midst of the twisted cockpit you could see it wasn't a pretty sight.
Freedom is never free. All those years during the cold war our mission was clear and we knew who the enemy was. The pilots risked their lives and us guys on the deck worked long hours as mistake free as practicality allowed, which may be 99.99%, who knows.
**** will still happen, and Freedom still is not free. And there still is an enemy but it may not be as clear.
I think it's a lot closer than any ever before. And it's anything but terrorists.
***the man who lost his family is one hell of a class act. there are many Americans who are not fit to eat the undigested peanuts out of a steaming pile of his doody.***