No Cause Found for Crash of Guard Jet

An investigation of the crash of a California Air National Guard jet fighter that killed two officers in 1987 failed to establish the cause of the mishap, the Legislature was told Thursday.

The probe by the state auditor general, an investigative arm of the Legislature, was ordered by the Senate last year after charges by the widow of one victim that the National Guard and Air Force had “covered up” the circumstances of the accident.

The Senate told the auditor general to examine aircraft maintenance, air crew training and flight safety activities of the Air Guard’s 144th Fighter Interceptor Wing at Fresno, where the F-4 jet and its crew was assigned.

However, Kurt R. Sjoberg, acting auditor general, said in his report to the Legislature that although certain records were made available to his inspectors, the report on the Air Force’s own investigation of the accident was withheld and other key documents were routinely destroyed.

Air Force officials, Sjoberg said, declined to give a reason for withholding the accident report, invoking “executive privilege.”

Killed in the low-altitude maneuver over the desert in Arizona in June, 1987, were the pilot, Capt. Wesley Deane, 27, of Modesto, and the weapons officer, Maj. John Jordan Jr., 39, of Sacramento.

Jordan’s widow, Toni, had waged an eight-month effort to learn details of the crash.

She said the Air Guard had ignored recommendations for reform of its management and safety procedures made before the crash that killed her husband. She contended that if the recommendations had been implemented the crash might not have occurred.

Mrs. Jordan said the Air Guard has refused to acknowledge the existence of a document she managed to obtain independently. It showed, she said, that although the pilot was qualified to fly the F-4, his training records had been falsified to indicate that he also was qualified to make the type of tricky high-speed, low-altitude maneuver she said he was making at the time of the crash.

The auditor general’s report, based in part on documents made available by the Air Guard, confirmed that “the pilot logged into his training records low-altitude training events that he did not actually fly” so as to make it appear he was qualified to do so.

Sjoberg said records dealing with flight safety, training and aircraft maintenance before the flight had been routinely destroyed in accordance with Air Force rules and that the records “that did exist were either not available to us or were not complete enough for us to review.”