Reporters, investigations and a crash at Pope Air Force Base: 30 years after the Green Ramp Disaster

Former Fayetteville Observer reporters instinctively knew that an aircraft crash at then-Pope Air Force Base 30 years ago meant it was their job to find out what happened.

Reporters confirmed the March 23, 1994, mid-air collision of a fighter jet and a C-130, which sent the jet crashing into a C-141 on the ground. The ensuing fireball and debris led to two dozen deaths of paratroopers on the ground and nearly 100 injuries.

On that day three decades ago, former Fayetteville Observer reporter Steve DeVane was the paper’s military reporter when city editor Jeff Couch told DeVane he'd heard on the scanner of the crash at Pope Air Force Base.

Couch sent DeVane and investigative reporter Mike Fabey to the scene, DeVane said Friday.

Main story: Green Ramp memories: How soldiers and survivors recalled deadly 1994 Fort Bragg air crash

“So Fabey and I go barreling out there ... then went flying down the All American Expressway — the fastest I’ve ever gone on that road, toward Pope," the veteran newsman remembered.

On Monday, Fabey said he heard the police scanners in the newsroom after the crash, and recalls how people started to call the newsroom to say they saw “a fireball,” and smoke.

“It all happened fairly quickly, and with that, Jeff said ‘Get out there,” and that was it – find out what you can and confirm something," Fabey said.

Upon arriving at Fort Bragg, DeVane pointed Fabey to where the 82nd Airborne Division units were and where Fabey could see a runway or flight line. Meanwhile, DeVane used a payphone to call public affairs representatives every 30 minutes, he recalled.

DeVane said that back then, before the advent of cellphones, the newsroom used radios to communicate.

After a couple of hours without answers from the military, DeVane called Couch on the phone so that no one else could tune into their radio frequency and hear the conversation.

“I called him, and he said, ‘Listen, I want you to listen to me very carefully, Fabey has found a hole in the fence, and I want your opinion on whether or not he should go in through that hole in the fence,’” DeVane said.

DeVane told Couch that Fabey could go through the hole, but if caught, he’d likely get arrested.

Fabey later connected with the Observer’s photographer, Marcus Castro, who was a veteran of the 82nd Airborne Division and knew where to go, DeVane said.

Castro was able to use a long camera lens to shoot photos of the engulfed aircraft through the fence, he said.

Fabey also remembered the hole in the fence option, but said he was able to see the crash without breaching the fence.

“In the end, officials acknowledged it, so there was no need for me to hop the fence,” Fabey said. “The biggest thing in my mind was to get the story.”

DeVane said he waited for public affairs who never showed up.

“I think my contribution to that initial story was getting official statements for then-Fort Bragg representatives and Pope representatives,” he said.

“So, that was the first day.”

First reports

Editor Mike Adams wrote the March 23, 1994, crash story that was reported by DeVane, Fabey and reporters Keith Hempstead, Scott Mooneyham, Kathryn Quigley and Pat Reese.

The Observer staffers confirmed numerous soldier deaths and injuries caused by the mid-air collision of an F-16D fighter jet with a C-130E Hercules transport plane.

The fighter jet then slammed into a C-141 Starlifter on the air base's Green Ramp and exploded into an inferno. Nearby, paratroopers were getting ready for a training jump.

A soldier who asked not to be identified told one of the reporters that a “huge ball of flame,” came over the left side of a nearby shed.

“I started crawling, running on my hands and knees,” the soldier said. “I heard some screams. I heard ammunition from the plane popping off all around us. ... The guy to my right fell, and I grabbed him and pulled him along.''

Brig. Gen. Bobby Floyd, commander of Pope and its 23rd Wing, said the fighter jet and the C-130 were practicing approaches to the runway, and pilots thought they were cleared to land.

Floyd estimated the F-16D was flying 195 mph and the C-130 was going 145 mph when they collided.

None of the C-130's five crew members were injured, while the pilots in the F-16 ejected safely, he said.

Most of the injured were taken to Womack Army Medical Center. Some were taken to Cape Fear Valley Medical Center and Highsmith-Rainey Memorial Hospital in Fayetteville, others were flown to the UNC Hospital's burn center in Chapel Hill and others were taken to the Marine Corps Air Station Hospital at Cherry Point.

The next days

DeVane said media was allowed to go to an area across from the runway the following morning, where 15-20 paratroopers who saw what happened were available for interviews.

One of the most emotional interviews that week, DeVane said, was with a female paratrooper who told him that after the crash she saw “a massive wave of fire,” heading toward the paratroopers.

The paratrooper told him that while some ran away from the fire, one paratrooper grabbed her and jumped on top of her to protect her from the “fireball,” he said.

The male paratrooper didn’t survive, DeVane said.

During another interview at Womack Army Medical Center, DeVane interviewed a paratrooper who told him that she’d been in a truck with another paratrooper who was missing part of his leg.

“She wrapped a belt or something around it and asked (the injured paratrooper) how he was holding out, and the (injured paratrooper) said, ‘My name is Seville. I am an 82nd Airborne paratrooper, and I'm going to make it," DeVaner ecalled.

The paratrooper DeVane interviewed, according to the March 27, 1994, report, was Army Sgt. Jenny Ernst, of Company C, 319th Military Intelligence Battalion.

A Womack Army spokeswoman told Ernst that the soldier she'd put a tourniquet on was recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, DeVane reported.

In the weeks that followed the crash, DeVane and other reporters followed up on the conditions of injured and burned paratroopers.

'I can still picture it': Pilots recall Green Ramp disaster

Investigations

It would take more than three months before the first military investigation report came out on July 1, 1994.

The original report, DeVane said, blamed the air traffic controllers who were part of a combined composite Air Force wing unit.

DeVane said others thought the F-16 pilot was also at fault for “showing off,” to a trainee or another pilot with a simulated flame-out landing, which was similar to the plane barreling toward the runway at a high rate of speed, then cutting off the engine to glide in.

According to the July 1, 1994, news report, an Air Force investigator said the air traffic controllers made numerous mistakes, resulting in an air traffic trainer being reassigned and other controllers being retrained after the accident.

Col. Vincent J. Santillo Jr., the investigator, said controllers at Fayetteville Regional Airport should have called the tower at Pope after the pilot of the F-16 said he wanted to do a “straight-in simulated flameout'' approach at Pope.

Instead of calling the Pope tower, controllers at the Fayetteville tower told the F-16 pilot to call Pope when he approached the base, he said.

Santillo said the F-16's appearance at Pope surprised the trainee, Sgt. John L. Barnes, who tried to tell the nearby C-130 Hercules cargo plane pilot to turn away from the runway but used the wrong call sign.

Senior Airman Robert L. Combs told the C-130 to continue toward the runway and cleared the F-16 to land, Santillo said.

Combs intended for the F-16 to land and for the C-130 to be above the F-16 before the landing, Santillo said.

Despite about a 28-second warning from Combs about the C-130, the F-16 pilot didn’t see the other aircraft and moved the F-16 upward, he said.

Another investigation report released two years after the crash included the F-16 pilot’s account of not seeing the C-130, which was backed up by a captain who was the passenger in the two-seater jet.

In February 1998, eight months after the Air Force released the results of its second investigation into the crash, the Air Force decided not to discipline the F-16 pilot.

The Air Force's first investigation into the accident concluded that air traffic controllers made errors that contributed to the crash. Two enlisted men were demoted, and a colonel whose duties included flying operations and traffic control was punished for “dereliction of duty,'' relieved of his duties and reassigned to non-flying duties at another installation.

A senior noncommissioned officer was reprimanded for not providing sufficient training for air traffic controllers.

One of the controllers, Christopher Cross, challenged the Air Force over its finding and said the fighter pilot was primarily responsible for the accident.

Cross was supervising the pilots and planes in the air when the accident happened. He was stripped of his air traffic control duties, fined and reduced in rank.

Cross asked U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, from his home state of Pennsylvania, to help him get the Air Force to reopen its investigation.

Then-Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall ordered the investigation to be reopened in January 1997 after a report by the Defense Department's inspector general found that the Air Force did not adequately assess the actions of the F-16 pilot.

Cross was reinstated in 1997 but stripped of future air traffic control duties for “not accepting responsibility for the crash,” commander of Pope's 43rd Airlift Wing, Col. David Johnson, told The Fayetteville Observer in February 1998.

Despite Johnson saying he had doubts about Cross’ judgment, a report by the Air Force's top safety official at the time of the accident said that Cross' actions did not cause the accident.

Cross got out of the Air Force in October 1998.

“(The crash) definitely never needed to happen,” Cross said by phone from his Kansas home on Monday. “It should have never happened.”

Despite the investigations noting there was pilot error, the investigations didn’t elaborate on the errors, he said.

Cross said he thinks the jet pilot’s speed, altitude and inaccurate position reporting, along with confusion in the tower were all factors in the accident.

Cross claims that the fighter pilot didn’t have navigation equipment turned on and gave controllers an inaccurate distance for how far he was from the runway.

According to Cross, the pilot was operating at twice the speed and altitude authorized by local operating procedures.

“That might work in a large place like the desert in the middle of Arizona, but the air space here is half that," Cross said.

He said he’ll never forget the accident was on March 23, 1994, on runway No. 23 for the Air Force’s 23rd Air Wing, Twenty-three people died from injuries sustained in the year of the accident.

A 24th paratrooper died as a result of his injuries a year later.

“I think about it every day,” Cross said.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: How reporters, air traffic controller remember Green Ramp disaster