Md. Air Guard pilots flew with faulty chuté

Md. Air Guard pilots flew with faulty chuté

Md. Air Guard pilots flew with faulty chutes
Officials dispute time deterioration went uncorrected; Planes grounded last year
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By Tom Bowman
Sun National Staff
Originally published June 13, 2001



WASHINGTON - In an emergency, the lives of the men and women who fly for Maryland's Air National Guard literally hang by threads: the nylon rigging and Day-Glo orange canopies of their planes' parachutes.

But for years, pilots say, the Guard was lax in maintaining and inspecting the parachutes, which could have failed, with deadly consequences, if the pilots were forced to eject.

"We were flying around with bad parachutes for who knows how long," one pilot said. Many of the pilots remain bitter and frustrated over the problem and over the Guard's failure to punish the officers responsible for the safety of the parachutes.

According to interviews and portions of an internal Guard report, the Guard briefly grounded its squadron of 15 A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft last year after an inspection found that many of the planes' parachutes were defective.

The grounding came six years after a Pennsylvania Air National Guard rigger said he found a problem in a parachute after two of the A-10s were lent to his squadron in 1994. Senior Maryland Guard officials said no one told them about it.

"Nothing came through the appropriate channels," said Maj. Gen. Bruce F. Tuxill, the Maryland Air National Guard's top air officer and a former A-10 pilot who commanded the fighter wing that year.

In the intervening years, no Maryland pilots had to eject, but the risk if a parachute failed wasn't theoretical.

The squadron conducted more than a dozen training exercises, along with stints in Bosnia in 1994 and 1996 and a 1999 deployment to Kuwait, when the planes came under heavy anti-aircraft artillery while patrolling the skies over Iraq. And last year, during a training exercise, a pilot lost an engine and considered ejecting, according to interviews with six pilots.

Anger over the faulty parachutes continues to smolder among the Maryland A-10 pilots. Many argue that commanders never sufficiently disciplined those deemed responsible.

Four senior noncommissioned officers found at fault now have new supervisory positions within the squadron, part of the Guard's 175th wing. Several pilots complained that only enlisted men were punished, while officers responsible for overseeing their performance escaped official blame.

"This is still bothering us," said one of the pilots, all of whom requested anonymity, fearing retaliation. "The lack of trust is huge. There was no accountability."

In 1994, Master Sgt. Donn T. Taylor, a parachute rigger from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard's 111th Fighter Wing at Willow Grove outside Philadelphia, said he found a main parachute's lines all "twisted" in one of the Maryland planes. The parachute, he said, would not have opened.

Taylor said the Maryland Air Guard was notified, though he does not recall who made the call or who received the information in Maryland. "It was just supervisor *****pervisor," he said.

Last year, Taylor also discovered serious deficiencies with the three types of parachutes used in the Maryland A-10s, which led to the grounding of the squadron on March 23, 2000. The parachutes are designed to open sequentially after ejection. First comes the drogue parachute, which stabilizes the flier's seat after ejection, then the pilot chute, which in turn pulls out the main chute that the pilot uses to float to earth.

Most of the pilot parachutes were yellow or brown with age, and some "disintegrated" in the hands of inspectors, said Taylor, who uncovered the problems while serving as a replacement worker at Martin State Airport.

"There was something wrong with all of " the pilot parachutes,Taylor said in an interview. Without a working pilot chute, he said, it is unlikely the main chutes would have opened. Some pilot parachutes had been in use for 22 years, Taylor said, adding, "I don't think they would have held."

The problems with the parachutes and the subsequent grounding of the squadron are described in an internal Guard report, portions of which were obtained by The Sun.

According to the report, Taylor's assertion that he found a faulty parachute in 1994 was "unsubstantiated." That echoes the claim of top Maryland Guard officials, who said they never received word from Pennsylvania Air Guard officials about the incident.

But other parachute workers support Taylor's account.

One of them, who has since left the unit and asked not to be identified, confirmed that the parachute on the borrowed Maryland A-10 had "significant deviations" and that commanders at the Pennsylvania unit were informed.

Another worker, Anthony Monforte, who at the time supervised Willow Grove's parachute workers, also recalled the 1994 incident. "We had a problem," said Monforte, who retired as a senior master sergeant from the Pennsylvania Air National Guard and now lives in Florida. "The base commander was aware of it. Someone was detailed to make a phone call right away" to Baltimore.

Pennsylvania Air Guard officials would not comment.

Once problems with the parachutes came to light last year, Tuxill said, the Maryland Air Guard moved to ground the squadron, install new chutes and reprimand culpable workers.

No officers were disciplined, said Maj. Robert L. Gould, a Guard spokesman, because officials felt the responsibility for the faulty chutes rested with the noncommissioned officers who were the "first-line supervisors."

Inspections in March 2000 found widespread problems with all three types of parachutes used in the A-10, according to the internal Guard report.

Maryland Air National Guard officials confirmed that all 21 pilot chutes had to be replaced.

Moreover, nearly a third of the main parachutes were found to be faulty, with potential for fatal consequences. The problems ranged from incorrect packing to faulty hardware that could have kept the chutes from opening, according to Taylor and the report.

Six of the 21 main parachutes "would not have opened," Taylor said. But Tuxill said a Guard technical worker he declined to name told him those six chutes "probably would have worked." Still, acknowledged the general, "probably isn't good enough."

In ad***ion, the drogue parachutes would have failed "at about the same rate" as the main chutes, or about six of 21 parachutes, Taylor said. Guard officials said just three of the drogue chutes had to be replaced. The drogue chute is used when the A-10 is traveling at speeds above 285 miles per hour, said Guard officials.

The flawed drogue parachutes could have turned into "streamers," with the pilot tumbling, entangled in the other chutes if they deployed, Taylor said.

Both the main and drogue chutes should be replaced after 13 years, according to the manufacturer, while the pilot parachutes should be replaced as needed, Taylor said. Goodrich Corp., based in Charlotte, N.C., makes the ejection seat that contains the three chutes.

Last year's grounding lasted a week, just as 15 of the fighter squadron's 36 pilots were completing a two-week training exercise at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Eight of the squadron's 15 A-10s were in use during the exercise.

It took nearly a month for the entire squadron to return to the skies with new parachutes, said the report and Guard officials.

Pilots say it was during the Florida exercise that one of their comrades lost an engine and considered ejecting, though Tuxill said there is no evidence in the incident reports that the pilot almost ejected. What is not in dispute is that the plane was found to have had a faulty parachute.

Guard officials acknowledged that while the main chute was in working order, the pilot chute on the plane had to be replaced.

Another A-10 pilot asserted that the Guard's review of the faulty parachutes should have been conducted by independent outside investigators. An internal "commander's inquiry board" looked into the parachute problems and kept the results closely held. The report was never released.

The pilots also object that their commander, Brig. Gen. David A. Beasley, who initiated the internal report, told them little about what he had done to correct the problems in the squadron's survival equipment shop.

Beasley did not respond to requests for comment. Tuxill said he "could not speak to" the pilots' complaints about the lack of information from their commander.

Beasley also came under fire last year from other pilots in the wing who fly C-130 cargo planes. The general had sent a letter to about 40 of those pilots, saying that if they refused to take the Pentagon's anthrax vaccine, they would have to repay the government $30,000 in training costs related to a new version of the cargo plane. The letter was later rescinded after pilots complained that it amounted to "blackmail."

Tuxill said the survival equipment shop has been "completely revamped" with new personnel. And there has been a strong emphasis placed on inspections.

He and other Guard officials heatedly dispute the pilots' accusation that the state Guard investigation into the parachute problems was a whitewash.

Tuxill said they first considered a criminal inquiry through the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Officials said they also approached the Air Force Safety Center about an investigation. The center, based at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., consults on and investigates flight safety issues.

Since there had been no major property damage, injury or loss of life, the Maryland chute problem did not meet the threshold for a criminal investigation or safety center review, Guard officials said.

Instead, they turned to the National Guard Bureau, a Pentagon organization, which oversees state Guard activity. It dispatched Lt. Col. Martin Cooksey, an expert in ejection seats, to investigate. Guard officials note that Cooksey did not come under Beasley's command. Cooksey declined to discuss the investigation.

Four enlisted men from the Maryland Guard who were involved in the packing or inspecting of the parachutes received letters of reprimand after last year's inspections, Guard officials say, and were transferred to other supervisory positions. The one enlisted man described in the report as most directly responsible for the parachute problems was allowed to retire with full benefits.

Guard officials said the punishment seemed fair because there were no accidents or deaths as a result of the faulty parachutes. "These are senior noncommissioned officers - the top of the line," Tuxill said in an interview. "They made a mistake. We needed to give them different areas for different challenges."

Tech. Sgt. Earl C. Gregory, the chief of the survival equipment shop, was identified in the investigation as the one most responsible for the parachute problems.

Interview transcripts in the report portray Gregory as a supervisor who intimidated subordinates and higher-ups alike.

According to Guard officials, Gregory already had filed his retirement papers when the parachute problems were uncovered. Gregory admitted that "he had not been doing his job" and expressed "a deep sense of remorse," according to a memo, obtained by The Sun, about an April 2000 meeting with Lt. Col. Robert A. Hickey, one of the wing's senior officers.

Tuxill said Guard officials considered bringing Gregory back from retirement for the investigation, which would have required the intervention of the Air Force secretary. But with no accident or death involved, such intervention seemed remote, Tuxill said.

Gregory, visited at his Middle River home, declined to comment to a reporter on the Guard's internal inquiry or the parachute flaws.

Four supervisors received letters of reprimand. The identities of two of them, both noncommissioned officers, could not be learned. The others, both chief master sergeants who oversaw Gregory's work, have since been moved to other supervisory positions. Neither would comment.

One, Chief Master Sgt. Albert L. Sklar Jr., told investigators, "I'm embarrassed because I wasn't more vigilant" and "did not ask more questions," according to the report. Sklar is now the chief of the flight line, supervising maintenance and flight preparation for the A-10s.

The other, Chief Master Sgt. John H. Herzberger, was in charge of inspecting the parachute work and is now chief of maintenance operations control, overseeing various organizations - ranging from survival equipment to munitions - for the A-10.

Herzberger told the panel he "was caught completely off guard" by the parachute problems and "embarrassed."

"Frankly we didn't inspect the survival equipment shop with any regularity," he told investigators in the report. "In a period of about eight years of documentation, there weren't more than a handful of inspections."