Errant Course of Brown’s Plane Probed

As weary and rain-soaked rescue workers on Thursday began removing the bodies of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown and 34 others from the stormy hillside where they died, safety investigators were trying to determine why their Air Force jetliner strayed so far off course as it attempted an instrument landing in fog and driving rain.

The corpses were found scattered amid debris or resting inside the aircraft’s cracked fuselage and were being taken by helicopter to a makeshift morgue at the airport near this ancient seaside resort, U.S. and Croatian officials said. There they awaited identification and transport home.

U.S. officials cited bad weather, treacherous flying conditions and the possibility of faulty instruments as contributors to the crash of the Air Force T-43 into a mountain called St. John’s Hill. Croatian officials insisted that their airports are safe.

“The plane was not where it should have been,” U.S. Ambassador to Croatia Peter Galbraith said after two inspections of the crash site. Instead of approaching Dubrovnik’s Cilipi airport along the Adriatic coast, he said, the pilot flew over a rugged valley 1 to 2 miles inland, placing a ridge of boulder-dotted hills between him and the runway.

Evidence Sought

An 11-member team of investigators from the U.S. Air Force Safety Board arrived in Dubrovnik Thursday and planned to go to the crash site today to preserve and piece together evidence.

In Washington, Defense Secretary William J. Perry said that initial speculation centered on faulty navigational equipment either at the airport or aboard the 20-year-old military version of the workhorse Boeing 737 airliner.

But that explanation only raises a more troubling question: Did the Air Force shade its own safety regulations in an effort to get Brown and his delegation of corporate executives to the next stop on their ambitious itinerary, despite dangerous weather and antiquated instruments?

The crash marked the first time that the Air Force has lost a planeload of high-ranking civilian officials. Air Force officials said that a pilot has full authority to make decisions on matters of safety, unaffected by the desires of important passengers.

Nevertheless, the Air Force sometimes has tried to keep VIP passengers on schedule by attempting to land at airports that were closed to normal traffic because of weather conditions.

Investigators are trying to determine if the pilot of Brown’s plane knew that he was far off the normal landing pattern for the airport, tucked precariously between the sea and a mountain range. Aviation experts said that, if the pilot did not realize he was off course, he would have routinely descended to an altitude too low to clear the rugged peak.

Gear Not State of Art

Air Force Lt. Gen. Howell Estes, operations officer for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that the navigational equipment at the Dubrovnik airport is far from state of the art.

“In terms of the technology of the beacon . . , it is a kind of [technology] that’s been around for a while, there’s no question about that. But it’s still a very valid approach,” Estes said. “If we thought it wasn’t a safe approach, we wouldn’t allow our aircraft to use it.”

Col. John Mazurowski, acting president of the Air Force safety board, said that the approach path would be one focus of the investigation. He downplayed concerns that the fierce rainstorms in the area during the last few days will damage evidence. The investigators will be reaching the site more than 36 hours after Brown’s plane went down.

“It is always best to get [to a crash site] as soon as possible,” he said. “Unfortunately, this is as soon as we could get here.”

U.S. and Croatian special forces and other officials who reached the isolated and inaccessible crash site gave new descriptions of the wreckage, which indicated that there was little chance anyone could have survived.

Suitcases, airplane instruments and chunks of metal were strewn over an area larger than six football fields and straddled the mountain peak. An engine, pieces of the left wing and the largely intact tail section were deposited on the steep, north face of the slope, according to these accounts, while the fuselage came to rest on the other side.

“There wasn’t much left,” said U.S. Army Maj. Lewis Boone, who spent about three hours at the site Thursday. “To think just two pieces of a plane the size of a 737--that was pretty shocking.”

Unlike civilian airliners, the military version of the 737 is not equipped with the standard flight data recorders and cockpit voice recorders, the “black box” equipment that is intended to pinpoint the cause of crashes.

A senior Air Force official said that the equipment, which costs about $1 million when installed at the factory, would have cost at least $7 million to add to older planes, such as the 1973-vintage craft involved in the crash. The official said that Pentagon budget-makers decided not to spend the money.

A working black box could not have prevented the accident, of course. But it certainly would have made the job of the crash investigators easier.

Croatian Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa, in a news conference, said that 32 bodies were recovered at the site of the wreckage. A surviving 33rd victim, a female crew member, was evacuated late Wednesday night but died en route to the hospital. The exact toll remained unresolved, however, because of discrepancies in flight manifests and the condition of the bodies. The Defense Department released a list of 35 people that it said were on the plane.

Among the victims were senior American business executives, two Croatians--a photographer and a translator--and a New York Times reporter.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry said Brown’s body had been identified.

As of early today local time, 21 bodies had been transported in black plastic bags to a temporary morgue at the airport. Helicopters were continuing the recovery effort under clear skies. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman, meanwhile, declared today a national day of mourning.

Brown’s flight disappeared about 3:30 p.m. local time on Wednesday.

Kempster reported from Washington and Wilkinson from Dubrovnik.

* NEWPORT CONNECTION: One of the doomed pilots was a Newport Beach native. A16