Mistakes Inevitable, Marine Pilot Testifies

Testifying for the first time in his own defense, Marine Corps Capt. Richard Ashby said Friday that he was handicapped by faulty radar equipment and incomplete flight maps when he struck a set of gondola cables at a popular ski resort high in the Italian Alps.

But Ashby conceded that “mistakes were made.” During cross-examination in his court-martial on 20 counts of involuntary manslaughter--one for each skier killed in the tragedy last year--he admitted that he had not paid close attention to the radar equipment and acknowledged that flight maps often fail to include every potential obstruction on the ground. When government lawyers quizzed him about what he should have expected when he saw map notations for a village and a church, Ashby snapped: “I’d rather they had marked the cable than the church.”

Ashby denied that he was trying to shirk any blame in the case but added that “there’s a difference between responsibility and criminal responsibility.”

The case is expected to go to the jury next week. If convicted, Ashby could be given a maximum penalty of more than 200 years confinement in a military prison.

The 31-year-old pilot from Mission Viejo, Calif., was in the cockpit of an EA-6B Prowler jet when it struck the cables at an altitude of more than 600 feet below his restricted flight level and, according to expert testimony, at a speed much greater than the 400 mph approved for what was supposed to have been a routine training jaunt.

Ashby insisted that the plane’s radar altimeter did not warn him that he was flying too low, and he said that he and his crew became disoriented when they strayed from their flight path just moments before the plane sliced the gondola cables.

After the flight, Ashby was told of the many people killed when the snapped wires sent the large gondola crashing to the ground.

“How did that affect you?” asked his attorney, Frank Spinner.

Ashby, sitting ramrod straight in his khaki uniform with silver captain’s bars gracing his collar, suddenly broke down. Struggling with tears, he managed to respond with just one soft word, barely heard in the cramped courtroom.

“Devastated,” he said.

In the front row, his mother, Carol Anderson; his sister Cary Lee Horsager; and his girlfriend, Dodie Hewett, wept quietly. Behind them huddled several relatives of the dead, including an elderly couple who held hands, still grieving for their daughter.

Ashby Faces 2nd Military Trial

In addition to the 20 counts of involuntary manslaughter, Ashby, an eight-year corps veteran, is charged with one count each of damaging the jet and the gondola system, and one count of dereliction of duty.

After this court-martial, he faces a second military trial on a charge of obstruction of justice for allegedly hiding a videotape made inside the cockpit by his co-pilot, Capt. Joseph P. Schweitzer, 31, of Westbury, N.Y.

Schweitzer, who faces all of the same charges as Ashby, is awaiting trial.

Ashby said he had set the plane’s altimeter to warn him if he dropped below 800 feet, but he admitted under cross-examination that he had not paid close attention to the radar equipment. “I didn’t feel high. I didn’t feel low. I felt comfortable,” he said.

The flight was designated to go no lower than 1,000 feet.

Ashby testified for about five hours, at first appearing nervous, repeatedly blinking as he described growing up near El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. “I wanted to be an officer. I wanted to fly.”

As the day wore on, he grew more confident, at times even speaking in Marine Corps slang.

Once, in addressing the eight members of his jury, all Marine Corps captains and above, he called them “guys” and then quickly corrected himself with the more proper “gentlemen.”

He also vented his frustrations since the Feb. 3, 1998, accident, at one point complaining that it had been “nit-picked to death” by the Marine Corps.

Saying that he had flown once before over the same mountainous terrain, Ashby recalled nearly striking a hang glider.

“It scared the hell out of me,” he said. “And I’m sure it scared the hell out of the guy who saw me. We both thought we were going to die.”

He described other training missions as long, boring and tiring, and said they provided him little new training. He added that before the accident, he had just been approved to begin flying F/A-18 fighter jets and was eager to move past the older Prowler.

Ashby said Schweitzer, his navigator, reviewed the maps for the fatal flight and also was the one using the video camera in the cockpit, although it was turned off during the accident.

“As far as we knew, we had everything we needed to go fly this route safely and effectively,” he said.

He said the flight was normal. “I have a tendency to hum,” he said of the way he feels comfortable in a plane. “It gets you in the groove.”

But for a brief moment, Ashby said, the crew members became disoriented, flew over a high ridge and then dropped into the valley of skiers. He was unsure about how low he was, saying that “something funky had happened” to the radar altimeter and “it didn’t go off” to alert them that they were too close to the ground.

“It’s a very close-in valley,” he said. “You’re in this valley, and the mountains are high above you.” Ashby said that he twice dipped his wings to gauge his altitude, and “all I know is that I saw this cable car off to the right.”

He said the gondola appeared to be moving below his plane and that “all of a sudden, I saw this cable. It was as if somebody threw a baseball at your head, and it was already coming at me.”

Ashby said he pulled the plane’s stick up to avoid hitting the wire but still expected it to smash through the jet’s canopy.

“I watched the wire go over the canopy,” he said. “I braced for this big crash.

“Then there was a thud,” Ashby said, slamming his hand on the witness box.

Right Wing Sliced 2 Wires

It turned out that Ashby’s right wing had sliced two wires. The crew members radioed that they were returning in an emergency to Aviano air base in Italy. Ashby managed to land the plane safely, and he said that he and Schweitzer replaced the tape in the video camera with a blank one before leaving the aircraft. He said he later gave the original tape to Schweitzer and does not know what happened to it after that.

On the ground, the crew was besieged with questions. Ashby denied accusations at that time from officials that he was “flat-hatting,” slang for flying fast and low.

“We flew it professionally,” he testified Friday. “That’s absolutely what we did.”

Later, as he was questioned repeatedly by investigators and others, Ashby said he noticed his superiors “were doing weird things” and “we couldn’t trust anybody.”

The Italian government was incensed over the incident, and some demanded in vain that the crew be turned over to local authorities.

“Our biggest fear,” Ashby said, “was going to an Italian jail.”