SIDEBARS
WHO'S TO BLAME: It's not clear that the King-56 crew knew about the problem that likely caused their plane to crash.

THE ENEMY WITHIN: Fatal military mishaps are disturbingly commonplace.

FOLLOW UPS
A Force to Reckon With: Military critics say Oregon’s senators will have a tough time getting colleagues to crack down on lax A.F. investigations.

ERR FORCE. The King-56 widows aren’t the only Portlanders tormented by military crash investigations

Critics cite another flaw in the Air Force investigation of the King-56 crash

Recurrent Problems: a new Air Force memo reveals that C-130s continue to suffer from electrical problems suspected of causing November's King-56 crash.

Damage Control: The ballyhooed Air Force agreement to further investigate the King-56 crash avoids real reforms.

WEB EXCLUSIVE
BACKGROUND MATERIAL ABOUT THE KING 56 CRASH
 
-The harrowing testimony of lone survivor Sgt. Bobby Vogel

-A transcription of the last 2 minutes 48 seconds of the King-56 cockpit recording

-Biographies of the deceased airmen

-Testimony of Major Walt Mulder, a pilot who suggested a likely cause for the King-56 crash that was dismissed by investigators

-An Air Force safety bulletin that supports Mulder's testimony and alerts C-130 crews to those problems

-The Accident Board's Statement of Opinion

-An Air Force letter rebuffing a request by Sens. Gordon Smith and Ron Wyden for an outside review of the King-56 investigation

-Air Force Fact Sheet about the C-130 aircraft

-A diagram of a C-130 engine

-A letter from the Air Force safety director warning of impending "disaster" because of "shallow and incomplete" crash investigations.

-The so-called "April Fools'" letter that the Air Force's top general sent in response to the safety director's warning.

-Air Force safety official Alan Diehl's letter to Congress, detailing 30 faulty accident investigations.

-Editorial in The Oregonian telling King-56 widows to stop asking questions about the Air Force investigation

An Air Force memo obtained by Willamette Week details the problems behind a recent C-130 engine failure--or rollback--in Colorado.

10,985 U.S. aircraft accidents occurred between 1991 and '95. Only 195, or 1.8 percent, were unsolved, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.

The Pentagon Inspector General recently praised the Air Force, saying its "safety investigation boards are staffed with the technical expertise needed to accurately determine causes of aircraft mishaps."
 

Lockheed-Martin is headquartered in House Speaker Newt Gingrich's district. L-M's political action committee has "given thousands to his campaigns on top of corporate donations to tax-exempt foundations allied with the GOP leader," according to The Wall Street Journal.

On Capitol Hill, the term "C-130 math" refers to the fact that Congress has bought 10 times more C-130s than the Pentagon requested in the last decade.

WHO'S TO BLAME?

Air Force officials aren't the only ones likely to face increased scrutiny over the crash of King-56. Some of the airmen's widows are considering suing Lockheed-Martin, the plane's manufacturer, or United Technologies, the company that invented the part that may have caused the crash.

"We've been asked to investigate whether there is basis for a complaint, and that's about all I can tell you at this point," says Keith Tichenor, a lawyer with the Portland firm Pozzi Wilson Atchison, which represents five of the widows and King-56 crash survivor Bobby Vogel.

At the center of the legal questions is a part called the "synchrophaser." Many sources suspect it caused the King-56 crash.

The synchrophaser is a computer--roughly the size of a fat dictionary--that controls C-130 propeller blades and, ultimately, the engines' fuel and air flow. People familiar with C-130s have noticed that a voltage surge or drop--occasionally caused by high-frequency radios--can make the synchrophaser malfunction, telling the engines to quit for no good reason. The only way to avert disaster in that case is to disable the synchrophaser by throwing its circuit breaker and shutting off its power supply.

It's not clear whether the King-56 crew realized that the synchrophasers could have caused their engines to quit and took appropriate steps to correct the problem.

Nowhere on the three minutes of cockpit recording released by the Air Force does the crew mention "synchrophaser." Nor do crew members indicate that they threw the computer's circuit breakers.

Vogel told Air Force investigators that he thought the crew might have thrown the circuit breakers, but he couldn't be sure.

Tim Forte, former director of aviation safety for the National Transportation Safety Board, thinks the crew "probably screwed up." Forte notes that crew members were alerted to the problem by the flight manual, and the cockpit recording shows they had ample time to shut down the synchrophaser.

Bill Galbreath, one of the widows' attorneys, disagrees. He says the cockpit recording shows the crew was taking the right actions and going through the prescribed set of measures--step-by-step--but ran out of time. "It's my conclusion that the crew followed procedures but simply did not have time to follow all the manual procedures," he says.

Galbreath also notes that the new Air Force safety bulletin instructs crews to carry out procedures that weren't in their flight manuals. It's not enough to shut off the synchrophaser, the bulletin says. It tells crews that they should literally remove the synchrophaser from its mount and stow it away so that it doesn't continue to conduct electricity after being shut off.

If King-56's synchrophasers were faulty and the crew did the right thing, it's unclear who might be most culpable for the crash. The Air Force has not yet responded to Freedom of Information Act requests by Willamette Week and the widows' lawyers, which might provide some answers.

Lockheed-Martin refuses to answer WW's questions. Instead, two spokesmen for the top defense contractor in the country have steered questions to a military lawyer at the Air Force Safety Center, who, in turn, has referred all questions to the Pentagon.

This much is clear: The widows face an uphill battle if they try to sue. Federal law provides the military and defense contractors extraordinary protections against lawsuits. --BY