Prowler wreckage recovered by Navy

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, December 22, 2001

By Susanna Ray

Herald Writer

The Navy has removed most of the wreckage of the EA-6B Prowler jet from the Olympic Peninsula crash site and is continuing with two separate investigations into the Nov. 15 incident, a Navy spokesman said Thursday.

Scraps of metal are still scattered around the Olympic National Forest where the plane went down last month, but "I’ve been told it’s covered with snow" and the critical parts have all been recovered, said Cmdr. Jack Papp, spokesman for the Naval Air Force’s Pacific Fleet based in San Diego.

Some of the wreckage was taken to the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station, where the $60 million jet was based, and other parts were taken to the Naval Air Depot in Jacksonville, Fla., Papp said.

The remote crash site, which was sealed off during the recovery operation, has been reopened to the public, a forest spokeswoman said.

There’s no timeline for the two investigations into the incident, Papp said. The judge advocate general is conducting a manual investigation into culpability issues and whether such accidents could be prevented in the future. And investigators with the Naval Safety Center, based in Norfolk, Va., are searching for the cause of the crash.

"The safety investigation has one purpose, and that’s to answer the question, ‘Why?’" Papp said.

The jet was part of the training squadron based at Whidbey and had two instructors and one student on board. They all parachuted to safety, although one man suffered a broken leg.

Heavy fog and rain hampered the immediate search for the plane’s wreckage in a steep, heavily forested canyon about 20 miles north of Forks.

Prowlers are all-weather jets used to provide radar-jamming cover for fighter jets.

You can call Herald Writer Susanna Ray at 425-339-3439

or send e-mail to ray@heraldnet.com.

Herald file