Apparently Struck by Lightning : Jet Carrying Astronaut in Emergency Landing

A T-38 jet trainer with astronaut Brewster H. Shaw aboard apparently was struck by lightning as it approached the Los Alamitos Armed Forces Reserve Center Tuesday afternoon, setting off fires in both engines and forcing an emergency landing.

A National Aeronautics and Space Administration spokesman said neither Shaw, 41, nor the plane’s pilot, Robert A. Rivers, 35, was injured. Both stepped from the plane as firefighters arrived to douse the fires in the engine compartments.

NASA press spokesman Steve Nesbitt in Houston said the pilot shut down one engine but did not shut down the other “because if they had, they would have had to eject, and they were over a populated area.”

Another NASA press spokesman in Houston, Douglas Ward, said the plane “just barely made the runway,” a distance of about five miles.

But Lance Fletcher, an operations officer at the Los Alamitos base, said the plane approached over the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, a normal approach to the airport that avoids populated areas. There was no visible fire when the plane landed, and the fire was extinguished quickly, he said.

“The NASA press release is somewhat in error,” Fletcher said. “This was not a case of a jet flying over a populated area streaming lots of flames.”

Ward said Shaw, who has flown two Space Shuttle missions, one as pilot and another as commander, was en route from Houston to Rockwell International Corp. in Downey for discussions about redesign of the shuttle.

Neither Shaw nor Rivers could be reached Tuesday.

The NASA-owned T-38, a small, high-performance two-seat jet used for pilot training, was flying at about 2,000 feet altitude and had just reached the Orange County coastline when lightning apparently struck the craft, Nesbitt said.

Radioed Airfield

“That’s not totally confirmed, but that’s their feeling, as I understand it . . . ,” Nesbitt said.

“The cockpit began to fill with smoke. They shut off their electrical system and radioed for an emergency landing at the airfield.”

Fletcher said there was no competing air traffic approaching the base, so the plane had a clear approach.

“They then got an indication that the right engine was on fire--a warning light,” Nesbitt said. “They shut that engine down. Shortly after that, they got an indication that the left engine was on fire. . . . Rather than power that off and eject, they simply powered it down to low-throttle setting, just enough to maintain forward velocity.”

Fletcher said the plane landed at 12:42 p.m. and firefighters had no trouble extinguishing the flames, which had begun to lap through the fuselage somewhere between the cockpit and the tail.

The NASA spokesman said his agency did not know how severely the plane had been damaged, but Fletcher said it appeared on the outside to be intact, except for exterior evidence of smoke.

Shaw and Rivers were taken to Long Beach Naval Hospital for routine examinations and released, Ward said.

The plane was towed to a maintenance hangar at the base, Fletcher said.