Pilot ejects safely before his F-15 crashes on Nellis Range

Diana Sahagun

Friday, Aug. 4, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.

Air Force officials are combing the site near Rachel where an F-15 fighter pilot out of Nellis Air force Base ejected safely before his plane plunged into a dry river bed Thursday during a training flight.

Capt. Christopher Kirby was participating in electronic warfare exercises over the Nellis Range when the plane crashed 15 miles north of the Lincoln County town of Rachel, about 170 miles north of Las Vegas.

Kirby, who is based at a U.S. Air Force Base in England, was rescued within nine minutes of the crash by a helicopter unit from the Army National Guard, said Brig. Gen. David Moody, commander of the Air Force's 57th Wing.

Kirby, who has approximately 1,000 hours of flying time, was not injured.

The Military Accident Review Board has begun an investigation to determine the cause of the accident. Officials will rope off the crash site, identify plane parts and clean up the debris.

Capt. Peter Kerr, who serves in the 48th Fighter Wing with Kirby in England, said his immediate thoughts upon hearing of the crash were about Kirby.

"The pilot, that was the only thing on anyone's mind," Kerr said.

Kirby was involved in air-to-air combat exercises with seven other planes when he ejected approximately 8,000 feet above the ground, Moody said. The plane, said by the military to be worth about $15 million, was destroyed.

Moody said there were no weapons onboard and that no other aircraft were involved.

Following the accident, the pilots from Kirby's unit were grounded but the exercises continued throughout the day. Kirby will not be allowed to fly until he is cleared by the safety board, which could take up to a week, Moody said.

"During (military exercises) the pilots are in the most demanding missions so we can have the kind of successes that you saw in Desert Storm and Kuwait," Moody said of the continuing training on the Nellis range that all Air Force pilots undergo. "When you fly those missions, you take some risk."

Kerr said the benefit of coming to Nellis and taking part in the exercises is that pilots can be placed in situations they wouldn't ordinarily be in.

Even the intense heat helps the pilots from England, he said, where the temperature does not reach above 80 degrees.

"The hot weather is a good challenge because it prepares the maintenance crews so they would be ready if they were called to deploy to the desert," he said.

In June 1999 two F-15s from Eglin Air Force Base, Fla., crashed 60 miles east of Tonopah during military exercises being flown out of Nellis. No one was seriously injured.

In 1996, an F-15 crashed on takeoff at Nellis. The pilot ejected from the aircraft uninjured.

The worst Nellis crash occurred in September 1998 when 12 airmen were killed when two Nellis-based HH-60G Pavehawk helicopters crashed 25 miles north of Indian Springs.