Thursday, March 29, 2001

By Rick Emert, Bamberg bureau

SSgt. Tami Lambert / 21st Theater Support Command Soldiers from the 1st Military Battalion, 205th Military Intelligence Brigade in Wiesbaden, Germany,and airmen from the 86th Airlift Wing Honor Guard carry the body of one of the two Army pilots who were killed during a routine training mission near Nuremburg, Germany, Monday.

LAUF, Germany — By Wednesday, the crowd of spectators that flocked near the RC-12K crash site the day before was gone.

The area had grown quiet again.

The Humvees and refueling trucks from the 3rd Brigade, 1st Infantry Division, had returned to Vilseck, as had most of the unit’s soldiers who were called to secure the site.

Around the small farming town of Leinburg, the only signs of the crash and the ongoing investigation are dried-mud tire tracks along the main road going through town, and the 6-inch deep, soggy mud on the heavily traveled logging road that leads to the site.

However, about a mile up that logging road, a team of investigators is still trying to determine what caused the plane, flown by chief warrant officers George A. Graves and Lance L. Hill, both of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, to crash into trees Monday afternoon.

Graves and Hill were both killed.

Two days into the investigation, there are no answers, said Lt. Col. Keith M. Cianfrani, one of two safety officers from the Army Safety Center in Fort Rucker, Ala., looking into the accident. Cianfrani is president of the investigation board for the incident.

Forensic experts, search-and-recovery personnel and Army safety officers are hunting through the wreckage for some clues as to what happened, Cianfrani said of an investigation that would probably take two weeks.

"We don’t like to speculate until we have all of the information we need," Cianfrani said.

"The first week we spend collecting information. Once we have everything we need, [the inspection board] goes into deliberations to formulate what we think may have happened."

Investigators and V Corps officials have little information to discuss.

Based on interviews with witnesses, the investigators know the weather Monday afternoon was cold and moist.

"That could mean there was ice involved, but we don’t know at this point," Cianfrani said.

Rick Emert / Stars and Stripes Army investigators look through the wreckage of an RC-12K aircraft that crashed in a wooded area near Lauf, Germany, on Monday.

The investigators are waiting for radio and voice tapes from the Nürnberg airport to see if the pilots had radio contact with airport personnel before the crash. Cianfrani said the pilots crashed just a few minutes from the airport.

Although a U.S. Army Europe spokesman said Tuesday that the wreckage was contained in a 50-by-100-meter area, the investigators haven’t yet determined if flight data or cockpit voice recorders were installed in the aircraft. Cianfrani said some of the RC-12s have them, but some don’t.

If the recorders were installed, they will go to the National Transportation Safety Board for analysis once they are recovered, he added.

The Army safety officers will look into three factors during their investigation: the human factor, the equipment factor and the environmental factor, Cianfrani said.

They use clues and information gathered at the site and a review of unit records to rule out the factors until they’ve determined the cause, he said.

On Friday and Saturday, the wreckage will be recovered from the site and transported by Army tractor-trailers to Wiesbaden, where the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade is based and where the investigation will continue until complete, Cianfrani said.

"When we’re finished here, we’ll brief the commanding general [at the division or corps level] on what the cause was," Cianfrani said.

However, he added, the investigation will remain open. The aircraft’s components, such as the engine, will be broken down and analyzed.

"That could completely change the outcome of the investigation," Cianfrani said. In that case, the investigation board would brief the commander on the new results, he said.

"Everything we’re doing here is for accident prevention," Cianfrani added.

"We'll find out what happened and make recommendations [to Army leaders] so it won’t happen again."

The Army Safety Center investigates accidents for aircraft and ground vehicles.

The center’s investigators will always be involved when there’s a fatality or the vehicle or aircraft is destroyed, Cianfrani said.

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