Reckless pilots a problem for U.S. military

updated 6:50 p.m. ET May 8, 2005

WASHINGTON - Skimming low over hills in eastern Afghanistan, the 11 Marines packed into an Army Black Hawk helicopter asked for an exciting flight on an otherwise dull mission, demonstrating for visiting dignitaries how troops are sped into battle.

“Fly hard,” the Marines asked. The cockpit responded, “You asked for it.”

Climbing and swooping, the Black Hawk pilot crested a 400-foot hill then deliberately nosed into a dive so steep and abrupt that everyone inside felt weightless. A wheel chock rose off the floor like a magician’s prop and flew forward into the cockpit, jamming the controls.

In the horrific, tumbling crash that followed, a crew chief in the doorway died. Everyone else was injured. The $6 million helicopter was destroyed.

The accident last summer was among the latest in a series of exasperating crashes in the military that was blamed on recklessness, not enemy gunfire or faulty equipment, The Associated Press found.

“Top Gun”-style flying, personified by Tom Cruise as a brash Navy pilot in Hollywood’s 1986 film, presents the Pentagon with a dilemma: How to breed aggressive aviators in high-performance jets and helicopters capable of extraordinary maneuvers without endangering crews, passengers and aircraft.

The pilot in Afghanistan, Chief Warrant Officer 3 Darrin Raymond Rogers, 37, of Mililani, Hawaii, pleaded guilty last week at his court-martial to charges of negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, property destruction and failure to obey orders.

‘Not a bad person’
“I’m not a bad person,” Rogers told the judge. He acknowledged that he was “trying to impress the guys in the back.” Rogers was sentenced to 120 days without pay at Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas. He also must retire from the Army, but will retain his pension.

“There’s a difference between aggressiveness and recklessness,” said Richard A. Cody, a four-star general who holds the Army’s No. 2 job. “We want them to be aggressive but also disciplined, so they don’t get themselves in an envelope they can’t get out of.”

Some pilots bristle over challenges to how they fly, says a retired Marine Corps judge.

“Hot-dogging is not necessarily negligent,” says Patrick McLain of Dallas, who presided at courts-martial. “You need a person who’s bold and daring and courageous. It rubs against the grain to have this sort of nitpicking oversight. A very small minority would be in favor of scrupulous adherence to the voluminous rules about flying.”

A retired Marine fighter pilot, Kris Elliott of New Orleans, said: “Anybody who says they haven’t hot-dogged as a pilot probably isn’t being truthful.”

In one case, a Naval Reserve pilot, Cmdr. Kevin Thomas Hagenstad of Marietta, Ga., ejected and survived a crash in rural Tennessee last year that investigators attributed to flying so low that his $40 million fighter jet struck power lines three miles from the Watts Bar nuclear plant.

Hagenstad, who broke his ankle, said he was “not at liberty to discuss this.”

The Navy’s top safety commander, Rear Adm. Dick Brooks, cited “blatant” rules violations by Hagenstad.

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