Navy Pilots’ Lie About Mid-Air Collision Shoots Down Careers

Last St. Patrick’s Day, two Navy fighter pilots were conducting warfare training operations 25,000 feet above the Pacific when they decided to take photographs for their scrapbooks of the new F-14 Tomcat jets they were flying.

As the pilots maneuvered the planes for a close-up shot, the two jets bumped against each other, knocking a $500,000 Phoenix missile into the ocean. The four aviators in the two planes immediately decided to concoct a story for their squadron commanding officer to make the bump seem to be a freak accident in the clouds. When they learned that their conversation had been recorded, they arranged to get the tapes and throw them overboard.

Today, senior Navy officers in San Diego are seeking to fire the four aviators for trying to cover up the cause of the mid-air collision.

The aviators, who were trained at a cost of $1.5 million per man, claim they are getting a bum deal.

“We’re not exactly choirboys in all this, but we’re singing just the way they taught us to,” said Lt. Donald Cutts, a 16-year Navy veteran and former Green Beret. “In Navy aviation, we have a saying that you’d rather die than look bad.”

Cutts’ comments are “self-serving bravado” and “egoism,” said Vice Adm. James E. Service, commander of the Pacific Fleet naval air force. Service said the Navy expects its fighter pilots to defend the nation with honesty and integrity.

“If (a pilot) will lie to you in peacetime, certainly he’ll lie to you in war and you can’t depend on him,” Service said. “If you don’t have that integrity in warfare, you’re in a world of trouble.”

In the last two months, senior Navy officers in San Diego have recommended general discharges under honorable conditions for pilots Lt. Arthur Flynn, 32, and Lt. Joseph Grund, 31, and radar intercept officers Cutts, 33, and Lt. Mark Wolf, 29.

“These guys should consider themselves very fortunate this did not go to general court-martial,” said Cmdr. Tom Jurkowsky, a Navy spokesman in San Diego. “They could well have gone to federal prison and done some time.”

The mishap occurred between Hawaii and the Philippines as the aircraft carrier Constellation was beginning a six-month deployment in the Western Pacific. The pilots were 250 miles from the carrier when they decided to perform a tricky “roll-under” maneuver to photograph the F-14 jets, valued at $40 million apiece.

When the planes hit--dumping one Phoenix missile and causing minor damage to the jet engines--the two-man crews in each plane agreed to tell a lie.

“We decided we’ve got to do something to make things look better,” Cutts recalled. “We (agreed to) go back and tell them we were flying in the clouds and bumped into each other . . . mark it down for the right stuff . . . add some weather and take out the camera.

“We were pretty comfortable with the story. It seemed perfectly plausible.”

The aviators did not realize, however, that their conversations over the air defense radio frequency were being monitored aboard the Constellation. In addition, flight leader Flynn was unaware that he had inadvertently turned on a video camera mounted on the front of his F-14 that recorded the flight pattern and radio transmissions, Cutts said.

When the aviators discovered later that evening that their squadron leaders had viewed the videotape, Cutts and Flynn arranged to confiscate the tape and Cutts tossed the evidence overboard, Cutts said.

The four flight officers were initially scheduled for a court-martial hearing that could have resulted in criminal convictions. But the Navy decided against filing criminal charges to prevent its confidential Aviation Mishap Board reports from being released in court. The Navy feared that defense lawyers would request copies of the Mishap Board’s findings during court-martial hearings.

The four aviators were reprimanded and fined as much as $2,000 apiece in July by retired Adm. Sylvester Foley in Hawaii and stripped of their wings in September by Navy personnel officials in Washington.

During the investigation of the accident, the Navy uncovered three previous unsafe flying incidents involving Flynn in which no corrective action was taken, Jurkowsky said. Flynn could not be reached for comment.

The four aviators have been assigned jobs in Southern California ranging from escorting VIP guests in San Diego to working Air Force One security at Point Mugu near Oxnard.

Three of the pilots told The Times in interviews Wednesday that they think the Navy has overreacted, particularly in light of the shortage of fighter pilots and the costliness of flight training.

The officers, who are fighting for their $30,000-a-year jobs, said that they told the truth to Navy officials the day after the accident and that they have since accepted complete responsibility for their actions.

“The public is interested in what the Navy does with $600 ashtrays, but I’m not too sure they are interested in how they handle million-dollar personnel,” Grund said. “I think we’ve been mishandled in the Navy’s efforts to . . . send a message to the fleet.”

Navy officials said that the four aviators are being dismissed because they conspired to lie about the accident, not because they bumped planes.

“The Navy has a duty to the taxpayer to ensure that only those officers of highest quality be entrusted with responsibilities inherent in operating multimillion-dollar weapons systems,” Jurkowsky said in a prepared statement. “There is no justification to be found anywhere for retaining officers of questionable ability and integrity on active duty.”

The officers said they were flying at a speed of about 220 knots when Flynn decided to take a snapshot while aiming down on the cockpit of the F-14 flown by Grund.

“It was a spur of the moment thing,” Cutts said. “Flynn realized he had his camera with him and that he didn’t have any pictures of F-14s.”

Flynn, the team flight leader, motioned for pilot Grund in the other plane to maneuver his Tomcat fighter within 50 feet for the close-up photographs, Grund said. A Navy spokesman said that Flynn placed Grund’s plane in a difficult position for Grund to hold his plane in mid-air.

Cutts described the maneuver, known as a “roll-under,” as a fairly simple movement. He said the right rudder of his F-14 clipped the other plane because his jet’s spoilers, the devices on the wing that enable a plane to maneuver, weren’t operating properly.

“If the plane had been working fine, there wouldn’t have been any problem,” Cutts said.

After the collision, the pilots flew alongside each other to inspect the damage. They noticed that both engines had been nicked and that the Phoenix, the Navy’s premier air-to-air missile with a range of more than 65 miles, that had been under Flynn’s plane was missing.

“I really regret wasting taxpayers’ money,” Cutts said of the lost missile. “But these things happen, especially when you’re playing around with high-performance airplanes.”

The F-14 is a twin-engine supersonic fighter that is capable of controlling six Phoenix missile launches while simultaneously tracking two dozen targets. The jet, made by Grumman Aerospace Corp., can also carry a mix of other air missiles, rockets and bombs.

Once the four officers knew that they had lost a missile, they agreed that they needed an alibi to save their careers, they said. That’s because Grund had received partial blame for a January, 1985, accident in which he hit an A-6 Intruder while landing on the carrier flight deck, causing $5.5 million worth of damage.

Grund was initially cleared of any wrongdoing but later reprimanded because the commanding officer of the Constellation did not want to take the blame for turning the ship during the landing, the aviators allege.

“We consciously decided we were not going to get a fair shake if we came back and told the truth because of what they did with the truth last time,” Cutts said. “Joe (Grund) came up (on the radio) and said, ‘They screwed me last time. I’ll never fly again if I go back and tell the truth.’ ”

Grund said that, from the first day of fighter training, pilots are taught to make bad situations look better. He recited popular mottoes among fighter pilots such as: “There are no points for second place,” “I’d rather die than look bad,” and “If you’re in the (parachutes), make sure you get your story straight before you hit the water.”

“We’re talking about the fighter community,” Grund said. “We’re supposed to go out there and kill people. We’re not trained to be Boy Scouts.”

Service responded: “The American public and the combat pilots who fly with these guys would argue, I think, that these men do not have the right stuff. They’ve only got part of it. And you need all of it, all the time.”

Navy officials said that, by landing the two jets without notifying the ship, the pilots risked the lives of every member on the ship.

“What those guys did by not reporting what had happened was jeopardize several thousands of lives when they landed on that carrier,” Jurkowsky said. “There is no excuse for it. . . . God only knows what could have happened with all those planes and fuel sitting on that flight deck.”

Once they landed safely, the aviators quickly realized that their squadron leaders knew the facts of the collision. That’s when Cutts took the videotape from the ready room and tossed it into the sea.

Cutts said he realizes that dumping the videotape was a “really stupid thing to do.” But he remains angry that he is about to be kicked out of the Navy.

“They’re acting like we sold the Phoenix to the Russians,” Cutts said. “I’ve watched 16 years of military service flushed down the commode for one lie.”