THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 4, 1996 TAG: 9604040327
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 147 lines
A military plane carrying Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and a delegation of American corporate executives slammed into a mountainside Wednesday as it approached the airport at Dubrovnik, on the Adriatic coast of Croatia. Chances that Brown had survived were ``next to zero,'' a White House official said after more than 12 hours of rescue efforts.
Clambering over rocky, rugged terrain, working by flashlight in pelting rain, Croatian search parties found nine bodies and one survivor, described by a Dubrovnik doctor at the scene as ``a woman who was bleeding profusely.''
Miomir Zuzul, Croatia's ambassador to the United States, said the woman died during an ambulance trip to Dubrovnik Hospital. ``She lost a lot of blood,'' he added. ``There was nothing any of the doctors could do.''
But there was no definitive word on the fate of Brown, 54, a political insider who helped spark President Clinton's 1992 campaign. Glyn Davies, a State Department spokesman, said Wednesday night that all 33 people aboard the plane were presumed dead, but later retracted his comment, saying they were considered missing. Croatian television said all had perished.
Searchers at the scene and officials in Washington said they held out almost no hope that survivors would be found. A U.S. military official in Germany said there was no indication that the plane had been downed by hostile action.
Croatian officials said a combination of elements appeared to have caused Wednesday's tragedy. In particular, they cited the extreme weather, which has lashed Croatia's Adriatic coast with intense rain and wind for the past two days. Gusts of up to 70 mph were reported along with fog and driving rain.
One of those missing in the crash was Nathaniel C. Nash, 44, the Frankfurt bureau chief of The New York Times, who was accompanying Brown on a trip to the Balkan nations for an article on reconstruction efforts after the Bosnian civil war. Commerce Department staff members were on board as well, including Charles Meissner, assistant secretary for international economic policy.
Names of the corporate executives aboard were not made public by the government, but some companies issued statements confirming that their executives had been on board.
Several prominent businessmen who had at one point planned to make the trip did not do so. One was Alfred A. Checchi, co-chairman of Northwest Airlines, who elected instead to attend a White House state dinner Tuesday night.
A senior American official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the pilot of Brown's plane had flown up a valley parallel to the one he should have followed before turning for his final approach. When he turned, he hit the mountain, the official said on the basis of reports from the scene.
Clinton went to Brown's Washington home to comfort the commerce secretary's wife, Alma, and then to the Commerce Department, where he spoke feelingly of the missing Cabinet member as ``a magnificent life force.''
Clinton said Brownhad made the department ``what it was meant to be - an instrument for realizing the potential of every American.''
The plane, reportedly carrying 27 passengers and six crew members, took off at lunchtime from Tuzla in Bosnia for what should have been a routine flight. Brown had visited there with American troops attached to the NATO-led peacekeeping effort.
The plane vanished from radar screens at 2:52 p.m. local time (7:52 a.m. EST) as it neared the Cilipi airport, about 15 miles southeast of Dubrovnik, a medieval walled city squeezed between mountains and the sea.
According to Col. Robert Mirelson, a spokesman for the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, the weather was harsh - fog, rain and high winds from the south - but it was well within the limits for Brown's plane, a military version of the Boeing 737 known as a T-43A.
Never before in more than 20 years of military service had a T-43A gone down, although two civilian-model Boeing 737s rolled over and crashed in unsolved accidents. A 1991 United Airlines crash in Colorado Springs killed 25. A 1994 USAir crash near Aliquippa, Pa., killed 132.
An Air Force investigation team was hurriedly assembled to study the crash on Wednesday. The search for clues will be hindered, however, by the absence of a flight recorder. U.S. Air Force planes are not equipped with the so-called black boxes.
However, the jet did carry a proximity warning system, which warns pilots when they are flying too close to the ground, the officers reported.
The National Transportation Safety Board, seldom involved in military investigations, also is sending a team to Croatia because of the recent 737 crashes.
For reasons still unknown, perhaps pilot error or instrument falure, the plane came in too far north, missing the runway and striking the mountain - actually more of a large hill called Sveti Ivan or St. John. It came to rest on the hilltop.
``I can't tell you why they were where they were,'' said Lt. Gen. Howell Estes, operations director for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a Pentagon briefing Wednesday afternoon. He said he doubted that the pilots had erred but later backed away from that statement and said he could not speculate.
Although Peter Galbraith, the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, was at the airport awaiting Brown's arrival, both the State Department and the military had trouble all day verifying what had in fact happened.
For example, a senior Air Force colonel told reporters four hours after the wreckage was located well inland, near the hamlet of Velji Do, a mile or so from the airport, that the aircraft had come down in the Adriatic.
When the jet did not land as expected, a search was begun not only on land but also in the Adriatic. British, French and NATO helicopters and airplanes from bases in Ploce, Croatia, and Vicenza, Italy, took part.
Norfolk-based Navy ships, operating in the Adriatic Sea about 100 miles southwest of the plane crash, steamed toward the Croatian coast immediately after learning of the accident, Pentagon officials said. However, they were not actively involved in the search.
Included were the amphibious assault ship Guam, a troop and helicopter carrier, and the destroyers Conolly and Barry. The Naval Fleet Auxiliary Force oiler Leroy Grumman, no home port assigned, also was involved in the search.
The sea search gave rise to repeated erroneous television reports in the United States that the plane had gone down in the Adriatic. Croatian policemen reached the crash site first. American helicopters were unable to land because of fog, the Pentagon said, and so special forces commandos set out on foot.
Reports by Croatian officials suggested that the plane had broken up on impact, with debris widely scattered in an area of ridges and ravines.
Ivo Djuricic, 53, a villager, said he saw the plane fly over and then heard a crash. At the site, he said, he saw ``no signs of life.''
Reporters at the scene could see the plane resting on its belly on the top of a small hill. The plane's middle was burned.
Croatian police and U.S. soldiers were searching for bodies and survivors - an effort complicated by the heavy lacing of landmines in the area from the 1991 war.
``Only a crazy man would go there,'' said Zuzul, Croatia's U.S. ambassador.
Four bodies - three men and a woman - were recovered by midnight Wednesday, Croatian Prime Minister Zlatko Matesa told Croatian state TV. Croatian special forces police said another three bodies were recovered by early today, when the crash site was cordoned off. MEMO: This story was compiled from reports by The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Associated Press and Virginian-Pilot staff writer
Jack Dorsey.
ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Commerce Secretary Ron Brown chats with American soldiers shortly
after arriving in Tuzla on Wednesday. Brown was on an official visit
to Bosnia and Croatia with a delegation of American business
officials.
Graphic
KRT
FLIGHT AND CRASH OF COMMERCE SECRETARY'S PLANE
SOURCES: Air Force, Navy, KRT Global Weather, National Geographic,
wire reports
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT MILITARY ACCIDENT PLANE FATALITIES
BOSNIA by CNB