Italian Ski-Lift Cable Surprised Marine Pilot, Lawyer Says

Capt. Richard J. Ashby was guiding a U.S. military plane through a cloudless afternoon sky over the Val di Fiemme, a playground for skiers in Italy’s Dolomite Mountains, when something went terribly wrong.

The 31-year-old Marine aviator from Mission Viejo had logged 750 accident-free hours in the aircraft, an EA-6B Prowler, in training runs like this one Tuesday and in the real thing--surveillance missions over war-torn Bosnia-Herzegovina. This was his first pass over the Dolomites.

Believing at first that he was at a safe altitude, Ashby was stunned to see what he thought was an electric cable straight ahead and dipped to try to get under it, his lawyer said Friday.

The pilot knew instantly that he had failed, the lawyer added, but only after landing at his base 60 miles away did he realize the consequences.

Ashby’s plane severed a ski-lift suspension wire--apparently with its tail or a wing--and sent 20 people aboard a cable car plummeting at least 300 feet to their deaths. The disaster unleashed anti-American outbursts here, strained U.S.-Italian relations and revived calls by Italian leftists to close the NATO nation’s seven American bases.

Seeking to quell the storm, U.S. officials Friday admitted the obvious: Ashby was flying below his approved minimum altitude of 500 feet. President Clinton, declaring he was “heartsick” over the fatalities, promised a “no-holds-barred” investigation.

And a day after saying that the errant Prowler had none, Marine Corps officials handed over the plane’s flight recorder to angry Italian investigators, who said some of the data might be missing because someone failed to turn the right switch while removing the device.

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At the center of the tempest are Ashby and his three-member crew, part of the Marine Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 2 based in Cherry Point, N.C. They had less than a month left in a six-month assignment to the 31st Air Expeditionary Wing at Aviano air base in northeastern Italy.

Grounded at the base, idled in uniform, they are subjects of an international scandal and parallel Italian and U.S. investigations.

U.S. officials say they are well aware that their handling of the accident could affect the future of U.S. air bases in allied Italy, staging area for NATO air missions over the Balkans, the Mideast and the Persian Gulf.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi asserts that the pilot’s “earth-shaving flight” broke the law.

Italian media have called them “Rambos”--part of a breed of American fliers who irritate the population by sweeping fast and low through Alpine valleys and even under bridges. Some witnesses said Ashby was flying as low as 150 feet.

“This ‘Top Gun’ stuff has got to stop,” declared Mauro Gilmozi, mayor of Cavalese, the picturesque resort village where the cable car fell to an icy slope, killing the Italian operator and 19 tourists from Germany, Belgium, Poland, Austria and Holland.

Bruno Malattia, the Italian lawyer retained by the Marine Corps to defend the four aviators if Italy presses charges of negligent manslaughter, said: “They are very saddened by what has happened.”

On his advice, they have refused to answer Italian prosecutors’ questions.

Pentagon officials say the United States can assert “primary jurisdiction” in the case under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 1953 “status of forces” agreement, which states that military personnel accused of crimes while on duty should be tried in their own country.

Wary of Italian outrage if justice is delayed, Marine Corps investigators who arrived in Italy on Thursday set aside the standard probe of the twin-engine Prowler and moved directly to an inquiry into the crew’s possible misconduct.

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At a Washington news conference, Clinton said he had telephoned Prodi to promise “a no-holds-barred investigation of what happened [and] that the Italians would be kept fully informed and be a part of it.”

“I will do everything I can . . . to satisfy the people of Italy that we have done the right thing,” he added. “I understand why they’re hurt and heartbroken and angry, and they are entitled to answers, and we’ll try to give them.”

The brief account of the accident offered by Malattia, the Italian lawyer, was the first to come from the crew. It amounts to a denial that the pilot was stunting or taking deliberate risks.

“They were convinced they were flying at a safe altitude, within the assigned altitude,” the lawyer said in an interview. “They saw the cable at the last moment.”

Malattia said he did not know why crew members were unaware that they were so low. But the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported Friday that the pilot told his superiors that the plane’s altimeter and radar apparently had malfunctioned.

Aside from the plane’s altitude, investigators are focusing on its course--another subject of bitter dispute between Italian and American officials.

U.S. Brig. Gen. Guy Vanderlinden, deputy commander of NATO naval strike and support forces in Southern Europe, first contended that the Prowler was following a standard training route to practice dipping below enemy radar. But Italian Defense Minister Beniamino Andreatta insisted that the plane had veered off course by at least six miles.

Amid an Italian outcry over the contradiction, the U.S. command at Aviano backtracked, saying Friday that the plane was within an authorized “corridor” 10 miles wide “but not on the center line of the flight track.” It did not answer another question posed by the Italians--why a ski resort was anywhere in the plane’s authorized path.

Meanwhile, as part of the fallout from the mishap, the Refounded Communist Party, whose support in Parliament sustains the center-left Prodi government, is pressing anew its view that the U.S. bases in this country are no longer needed now that the Cold War is over.

Italians usually reject that view by wide margins in opinion polls. But one conducted this week showed them evenly divided on whether the bases are in Italy’s best interest.

“Italians are very reasonable, but this kind of disaster shocks everyone, and there is a fringe of Communists who are very good at mobilizing these feelings,” said Luigi Caligaris, Parliament member from the right-wing Forza Italia group. “I would warn the Americans: ‘Don’t sweep this incident under the rug. Be brutally frank about what happened.’ ”

Boris Biancheri, a former Italian ambassador to Washington, said he doubts that the outcry over the accident will close any bases, but it might lead to a renegotiation of their rules of operation--such as how low and where U.S. warplanes may fly.

Andreatta, the defense minister, said Ashby’s Prowler had no business flying below 2,000 feet. Vanderlinden said it was authorized to practice dipping below enemy radar at prescribed altitudes ranging from 500 feet to 2,000 feet. The subsonic plane’s mission is to jam antiaircraft radar, freeing bombers and fighter jets to attack.

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Boudreaux reported from Rome, Kempster from Washington.

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Tragedy in the Italian Alps

A U.S. Marine jet severed a cable car line about 300 feet above the ground at a Northern Italian ski resort. A cable car plummeted to the ground, killing all 20 on board.

Tail or wing of EA-6B Prowler severed two fist-sized steel cable.

500 feet is minimum altitude approved for flight.

Two-thirds mile from base lodge traveling down mountain.

Pilots of the EA-6B Prowler do some low-level flight training because in time of war they are required to fly as low as 100 feet to escape radar detection.