Some say the type of jet that crashed is tough to control

Pilots affectionately call it the "Sky Pig" for its awkward, snub-nosed design. But some people say the aging EA-6B Prowler jet can be notoriously tough to handle.

"It's a difficult aircraft without a lot of room for error," said former Navy Lt. Vince Verges, who lost his hand when he was forced to eject from a crashing Prowler in 1992. "It's big, not very aerodynamic, and easy to lose control of."

Navy investigators still don't know what caused a Prowler jet from Whidbey Island Naval Station to crash Thursday during a routine training run over the Olympic Peninsula.

The three crew members ejected and parachuted to safety. They landed near Klahowya campground just off state Highway 101, about seven miles from the crash site.

One suffered an injured leg and was released from Olympic Memorial Hospital in Port Angeles yesterday on crutches. The other two walked away uninjured.

The Navy said it is not releasing their names at the crew's request.

The jet went down in heavy rain and fog shortly before 2 p.m. in a steep, heavily forested canyon in the Olympic National Forest, about 20 miles north of Forks in Clallam County.

Navy officials said there was no evidence that weather played a role in the crash.

A Navy team led by an investigator from the Navy Safety Center in Norfolk, Va., hiked into the area yesterday to search the wreckage for clues and to begin salvage and cleanup.

There were no bombs or radioactive material aboard, said Lt. Kyra Hawn, spokeswoman for the Naval Air Force Pacific Fleet headquarters in San Diego.

The Forest Service has cordoned off two square miles around the crash site and closed Forest Service Access Road 2329 between mile marker 4.7 and 13.7 while the investigation continues.

First built in 1971, the $60 million Prowler is the military's only airborne jammer of both radar and communications.

It is essential to ensuring the safety of fighters, bombers and other planes within range of anti-aircraft missiles.

Prowler squadrons are stationed aboard all U.S. aircraft carriers and have played a key role in U.S. bombing runs over Afghanistan.

Thirty aviators have died in Prowler accidents since 1980, a fatality toll military analysts say is not out of line with that of other tactical aircraft. The most recent deaths were in 1998, when four Whidbey-based aviators died in Norfolk when their EA-6B slammed into another plane on the deck of the USS Enterprise.

Between 1980 and 1990, the Prowler was involved in "Class A mishaps" about twice as often as other tactical aircraft. Those are incidents that involve loss of life or at least $1 million in damage.

Its safety record has improved markedly since then, with about half as many accidents as other tactical jets, which include spy and surveillance planes but not fighters and attack jets.

The Navy Safety Center estimates two-thirds of EA-6B accidents are caused by crew error.

"All tactical aircraft have a higher crash rate than cargo aircraft or bombers," said Tim Brown, a senior associate with Globalsecurity, a Virginia-based think tank. "They're naturally harder planes to fly and have more dangerous missions."

Verges had been a Prowler navigation officer for five years when his plane went into a tailspin above the Olympic Peninsula in 1992.

He and the other three crew members ejected, but as his ejection seat burst out of the plane, his hand got snagged on an I-beam in the cockpit and was ripped off.

After months in the hospital, he was forced to leave the Navy on a medical discharge and is now an assistant school principal in Florida.

"I think everyone realizes the Prowlers are a little less forgiving than other airplanes," he said. "Even F-14 pilots lose control and put their planes in spins, but it just seems like with this big pig it's a little harder to control."

The jet that crashed Thursday was part of Tactical Electronic Attack Squadron 129, known as the "Vikings," a training squadron based at Whidbey. It trains all Navy, Marine and Air Force Prowler pilots.

The crew of two instructors and one student was conducting electronic countermeasure exercises over the Olympic Military Operating Area. The training range extends from the Strait of Juan de Fuca south to Forks, and from the Olympic National Park west over the ocean.

The area is used for in-flight air-refueling training, electronic-warfare training and combat maneuvering.

Built by Northrop Grumman, the Prowler normally carries a pilot, a navigator and two electronic countermeasure officers.

It has the basic frame of the now-retired A-6 Intruder attack plane, with the addition of a rear cockpit and electronics gear.

The plane, which Navy spokeswoman Hawn said went out of production about 10 years ago, also is equipped to fire HARM missiles that home in on air-defense radars.

With the advent of stealth technology in the 1980s, the Pentagon figured it would have less need for jammers because the new-era fighters and bombers were to be virtually invisible to enemy radars. That has not proved true, however, as the 1999 air war in Kosovo and missions over Iraq and Afghanistan have shown.

Even B-2 bombers, boasting the world's most advanced stealth technology, commonly get Prowler support.

Thursday's crash left 122 Prowlers in service, Hawn said.

Ray Rivera can be reached at 206-464-29226 or at rayrivera@seattletimes.com.