Causes of crashes determined

Jace Radke

Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004 | 11:24 a.m.

A loss of fuel due to pilot error caused the June crash of an F-15C fighter jet that was being flown by an instructor out of Nellis Air Force Base, according to a report released Wednesday by the Air Force.

The $31.9 million F-15C Eagle crashed about 60 miles northeast of Nellis on June 18 after Maj. David Graff, was forced to eject due to a dual engine flameout. At the time Graff was a weapons school instructor pilot at Nellis.

The president of the board investigating the crash states in the report that the loss of fuel was most likely caused by the inadvertent activation of systems that would cut the fuel to the engines.

"It is more likely than not that the mishap pilot inadvertently bumped or pushed the fire warning light push-buttons just prior to starting a series of defensive maneuvers," the report states.

Graff has since been transferred from Nellis and is a professional military educator and no longer an instructor pilot, Air Combat Command officials said.

Gen. Hal Hornburg, commander of Air Combat Command, told the investigators that he was not convinced the buttons were the source of the fuel cutoff, but approved the accident report because it met Air Force regulations, according to the summary of the report.

After Graff safely ejected the F-15C went down on Bureau of Land Management land and was completely destroyed.

Also completely destroyed was a remote-piloted Predator aircraft assigned to Nellis that crashed in August in Iraq, according to a second crash investigation report released Wednesday by the Air Force.

A misrouted oil line inside an MQ-IL Predator caused a fire that made the aircraft uncontrollable and led to it crashing near Balad Air Base in Iraq on Aug. 17, the report states.

The Predator was assigned to the 15th Reconnaissance Squadron at Nellis and was valued at $4.2 million.