Navy probes 2 Hornet practice bomb mishapsBy Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Nov 8, 2007 20:13:56 EST
SAN DIEGO — The Navy is awaiting the results of an investigation into two separate incidents in which 10-pound “dummy” practice bombs got hung up on the wings of two different F/A-18C Hornet fighter jets last week, a spokesman said Thursday.
In one case, an inert bomb, known as BDU-48, came off the rails from the fighter jet Oct. 30 and struck a wall near a warehouse in an industrial area just outside Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach, Va. No one was injured in that incident, which occurred as the jet returned to Oceana after a training flight in North Carolina.
The same day, a Hornet jet with Strike Fighter Squadron 125 from NAS Lemoore, Calif., experienced the same problem with a BDU-48 while on a training flight over Southern California, said Lt. Cmdr. Charles Brown, a Naval Air Forces spokesman at Naval Base Coronado, Calif.The Hornet was operating from El Centro and conducting training in one of the military ranges at the time. The Navy has no reports of anyone hurt or structures damaged because of the incident, Brown said. The aircrew was cleared after officials examined the circumstances of that incident, he added.
Just where the blue-colored bomb landed, however, isn’t clear.
A Navy search team that set out to find the 10-pound inert aerial bomb near El Centro came up empty, Brown said.
Rest of article at:
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2007/11/navy_practicebomb_probe_071108w/