Pilots in my unit were devastated when we heard about this crash. We'd successfully managed to go though actual combat operations without an serious aircraft damage of any injuries with our aviation assets during the 100 hours of the ground war campaign of Desert Storm. A fatal crash during routine training a few days later was just unthinkable.
Crash synopsis: 1 March 1991, 84-24177, a CH-47D from the B Company 159th Aviation Battalion of the 24th Infantry Division hit a radio tower while flying 250 feet above ground level (AGL) a NVG training mission along tapline road shortly after we moved to our new base. The Chinook was piloted by the Bravo Company Commander Major Marie Rossi and their Standardization Instructor pilot (SIP). Both pilots and two of the three enlisted crew members received fatal injuries.
Because of the loss of fellow crews we were saddened, but because the crash was 100% preventable it was infuriating! They hit the only radio tower within a 50 mile radius. It literally was the first item on the hazards map for the area of operations. The tower was 500 feet tall and they hit it at the 257 foot mark according to the accident report. No one can say it was from a lack of experience in the cockpit, because as a rule of thumb, Chinook Company Commanders flew with the Standardization Instructor Pilot (SIP, the most senior IP in the unit.) partially to ensure that things like this didn't occur to the commander.
I felt mostly for the enlisted crew. They depend on the pilots to fly the aircraft safely and to take appropriate measures to ensure they have all the information they need for a safe flight. Hundreds of missions were flown in the previous week and we all lived. Then someone goes on a NVG currency mission and forgive me for my righteousness, STUPIDLY FLIES INTO A GIGANTIC TOWER!!!????
A normal result of such incidents was a SAFETY STAND-DOWN and this was no different. We were grounded, safety procedures were gone over, commanders emphasized that safety was the primary consideration and we all sat and talked and brooded and thanked God that it wasn't us.
I think one of the most troubling thing for me was that the three Chinook crashes that had occurred in the past year had not been the result of pilot inexperience. In all three, the Standardization Instructor Pilot had been one of the pilots involved either on the controls or supervising the training. What was the issue? It couldn't be lack of familiarity with the aircraft or pilot skill, these were our teachers. One was partially a hardware issue with the hook release, but even that was predicated by a pilot error in the approach. It was a no moon night, so there is the question of should NVG external load training have been done in those conditions.
The other two crashes were judgement errors on the pilots. One flying up into to the clouds on the side of a mountain trying to get to a field site, the other you read about above, a NVG training mission where they hit the only obstacle for miles and should never had flown anywhere near it..
I'd been the only pilot to refuse to fly a mission in Korea due to our having been awake for almost 24 hours and it was just a field training exercise. I think I made a conscious decision that day to try and avoid the pitfalls of complacency and command pressure as a pilot. Looking back at my flying career, I see I wasn't always successful, but I managed to avoid any crashes and successfully survived the times when I either caved to command pressure or made poor cockpit decisions that were not so severe that really bad things happened.
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