Experts examine air show crash jet

Investigators are sifting through wreckage for clues to what caused a US Navy Blue Angel jet to crash into homes during an air show in South Carolina.

The military identified the pilot, who was killed in the crash, as a 32-year-old Lt Cmdr Kevin Davis, who was performing in one of his first shows with the team.

Davis was in his second year with the Blue Angels, the team known for its high-speed, aerobatic, non-combat demonstrations.

A sombre crowd watched yesterday as six jets flew overhead in formation near the site of Saturday’s crash. Smoke streamed behind one of the jets as it left the others to complete the “missing man formation”, the traditional salute for a lost military aviator.

“The spirit of the pilot is in the arms of a loving God,” said Rob Reider, a minister who was the air show’s announcer.

The crash happened as the team was performing its final manoeuvre. Davis’ jet crashed just outside Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, with flaming debris hitting neighbourhood homes.

Eight people on the ground were injured and some homes were damaged.

The squadron’s six jets routinely streak low over crowds of thousands at supersonic speeds, coming within feet, sometimes inches, of each other. The pilots, among the Navy’s most elite, are so thoroughly trained and their routines so practised that deadly crashes are rare; the last one happened in 1999.

The Navy said it could be at three weeks before it announced what may have caused the crash.

Ernie Christensen, a former Vietnam fighter pilot who flew with the Blue Angels and later commanded the Navy’s Top Gun fighter school in California, said the intense flying left no room for human or mechanical error.

“When you are working at high speeds, close to the ground and in close proximity to other aircraft, the environment is extremely unforgiving. That is the reason they practise so many thousands of times,” said Christensen.

Saturday’s crash was the 26th fatality in the team’s 60-year history.

The Blue Angels are unique from other jet aviators because they do not wear the traditional G-suits that most jet pilots use to avoid blacking out during manoeuvres that exert strong gravitational forces.

The suits inflate around the lower body to keep blood in the brain, but that could cause a pilot to bump the control stick – a potentially deadly move when flying inches from other planes.

After the deadly 1999 crash, the Navy’s air training chief ordered the Blue Angels to consider wearing G-suits, but an investigation determined that the most likely cause of that crash was that the pilot was momentarily impaired because of a prior rib injury.

Pain from the rib injury might have kept the pilot from tensing his abdominal muscles during a turn, causing him to suffer tunnel vision.