OBITUARIES : Charles A. Sewell, 56; Veteran Test Pilot Decorated for Combat Flying

Charles A. Sewell, a veteran test pilot who survived 330 missions over Vietnam and Korea, was killed Monday in the crash of a vintage World War II torpedo bomber.

A spokesman for Grumman Corp., where Sewell was chief test pilot, said the highly decorated former Marine pilot was killed when the bomber crashed shortly after taking off from Danielson Airport here and crashed in dense woods.

Sewell, 56, was the only one aboard the plane. It was owned by a friend of Sewell’s, Richard Foote, who collects and flies vintage aircraft. After a stopover at the Grumman plant at Calverton, Sewell was to have flown the plane to New Smyrna Beach, on Florida’s east coast near the Kennedy Space Center.

Girard Rondeau, a resident of Brooklyn, said he saw the plane start to sputter as it passed over him from west to east. Rondeau said the engine simply stopped.

A spokesman at the Federal Aviation Administration’s regional office in Burlington, Mass., said the plane was a single-engine Grumman TBM, a torpedo bomber used in the Pacific theater by the U.S. Navy during World War II.

Sewell flew 110 missions in the Korean War and 220 missions over Vietnam and Laos. He earned numerous decorations, including the Legion of Merit, two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 15 Air Medals and two Purple Hearts.