Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Report Blames Fatal ’92 Cargo Plane Crash on Pilot Error, Confusion : Accident: The Navy study says poor radar equipment at Edwards Air Force Base also played a role.

Last year’s crash of a U. S. Navy cargo plane that killed two crewmen and injured seven passengers was caused by pilot error and confusion, along with poor radar equipment in the base’s control tower, according to a Navy report released Wednesday.

The twin-engine MU-2 turboprop from China Lake Naval Air Weapons Station was preparing to land on Edwards Air Force Base’s main concrete runway when it crashed May 18, 1992, after being caught in the air downwash of a much faster F-16 jet that passed above in a near-collision, the report said.

The 16-page summary of the Navy’s investigation concluded that the most significant factor in the crash was the failure of the MU-2’s pilot, after being passed by the jet, to maneuver away from the turbulence during a 50-second window of opportunity. The pilot had never flown into Edwards before.

The report also blamed the MU-2 pilot for misreporting his position to the Edwards tower, leading to his near mishap with the F-16, said tower efforts to separate the two planes were preempted by another plane’s radio call, and blamed “a poor radar repeater” for not alerting tower personnel sooner.

The MU-2 pilot, Navy Lt. David W. Garnett, 33, of Houston, was killed in the crash, as was Navy electrician Lorenzo Rodriguez Jr., 24, of San Antonio. Traces of the illegal drug methamphetamine were found in Rodriguez’s urine, but that probably had no relation to the crash, the report said.

Injured in the crash were four other Navy personnel, two contractor employees and one civilian U. S. Defense Department worker. Their injuries were reported as being serious at the time of the crash, but the Navy deleted details of those injuries in the report.

The Navy report said the MU-2 was headed to Edwards on a logistic flight related to an air-to-air missile test flight involving Naval Air Warfare Center FA-18 jets. The MU-2 was leased by Flight International of Florida Inc. to the China Lake facility, which is about 100 miles east of Bakersfield.

A follow-up Navy memo included as part of the summary dated July, 1992, said that Edwards, as of August, 1992, was replacing the radar display in its tower with a new system. Another memo said the commander at China Lake has ordered that all future MU-2 flights have two pilots instead of one.