WASHINGTON (Sept 16) - A Marine Corps F/A-18D Hornet fighter jet
 crashed into a swamp near Cape Hatteras, N. C. around 8:30 p.m. EDT
 on Monday during a routine night bombing exercise, the U.S. Marine
 Corps said.
     A spokesman said it was uncertain whether the two pilots aboard
 were able to eject before the crash, the fourth serious accident
 involving U.S. military aircraft in barely two days.
     The $28 million Hornet fighter was stationed with Marine Fighter
 Attack Squadron 224 from Beaufort, S.C., the Marine Corps said in a
 statement.
     Military and Coast Guard search and rescue helicopters and mili-
 tary police were at the site of the crash, which occurred in a
 marshy area near Cedar Island at a bombing range on Pamlico Sound.
     Representatives of the U.S. Marine Corps were to arrive at the
 crash site early Tuesday to begin investigating the accident, said
 a spokesman at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point.
     No information on the cause of the crash was immediately avail-
 able, and Marine Corps officials declined to say whether wreckage
 from the plane had been found.
     The 56-foot (19 metres) F/A-18D Hornet, one of 60 owned and
 operated by the U.S. military, is manufactured by McDonnell Douglas
 and can be used to attack and destroy surface targets during day-
 time or nighttime raids and under all weather conditions.
     The two-seater fighter was one of three Hornets from the South
 Carolina base that was practicing routine bombing at the range.
     The F-18 crash was the latest in a spate of U.S. military air
 accidents, including the crash of an Air Force F-117 stealth
 fighter at an air show near Baltimore and a Navy F-18 fighter
 in Oman, both on Sunday.
 00:39 09-16-97
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      WINDHOEK, Namibia (Sept. 15) - Searchers found airplane seats
 and a few papers Monday, but no bodies or survivors of the apparent
 collision between a U.S. military transport and a German plane
 believed to have been flying in the same air route.
     Air corridors often are shared, although planes traveling in
 opposite directions are supposed to fly at different altitudes.
 Namibian officials said the probable collision site was off their
 radar and they didn't know the German plane was coming because they
 had not received a flight plan.
     The Atlantic is 3,000 feet deep in the area of Namibia's Skele-
 ton Coast where the U.S. C-141 Starlifter and the German air force
 plane apparently collided and crashed Saturday, and some officials
 doubted much wreckage ever would be found. Nine Americans and 24
 Germans were missing. Military officials from Germany, the United
 States and South Africa -which is responsible for sea rescue opera-
 tions in the area - converged on Windhoek to coordinate the search.
 They also want to determine why it took 24 hours before rescue
 officials were told the planes were missing.  "We are about to hire
 some divers," German air force Maj. Gen. Gerhard Buck said in
 Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, which is northwest of South Africa
 on the continent's south Atlantic coast.Searchers found seats from
 the German plane and papers in German in two areas of the sea Monday
 near where the planes may have collided, about 115 miles west of
 Cape Fria on the Namibian coast.
     American officials said they could not say why it took so long
 to initiate a search or what steps were taken when the U.S. plane
 did not arrive at Ascension Island from Namibia as scheduled. "I
 cannot reconstruct that for you. We simply do not have that infor-
 mation. I'm not sure what the time line would be, but they would
 obviously inform people in the United States," said U.S. Army Col.
 Michael Mensch.The German plane vanished en route from Germany to
 Cape Town, South Africa, and Namibian officials said they never
 received its flight plan. "No departure signal, no flight plan.
 That's why we were not aware that the airplane was coming," said
 Jochen Sell, Namibia's chief air traffic officer.He told reporters
 such critical procedures are often absent in Africa. "It is normal
 in Africa," Sell said. "We have a big problem, a major problem."Buck
 said a flight plan for the German plane had been filed before take-
 off from Germany. But Sell said it was never passed on, as required,
 by controllers in the central African nation of Niger.
     Louie Lourens, Namibia's deputy director of aviation security,
 said the site of the apparent collision was out of range of Namibian
 air traffic control radar.The two planes were traveling on the same
 air route in different directions,  "although they should have been
 height-separated," South Africa's Brig. Hap Potgieter said (at)
 Pretoria, South Africa.
     A French aircraft flying over the apparent crash site Sunday
 night picked up a faint distress signal which may have come from an
 automatic emergency beacon. U.S. Air Force monitors in the European
 command also picked up the distress signal at about the same time,
 South African officials said. However, the presence of a signal
 "does not mean there is a survivor," Buck said.
     The American plane, assigned to the 305th Air Mobility wing at
 McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey, unloaded personnel and 32,000
 pounds of equipment in Namibia on Saturday and was returning to
 Ascension Island, a British territory in the South Atlantic.
     McGuire Air Force Base identified those on the American plane as
 Capt. Peter C. Vallejo, the aircraft commander;
 Capt. Gregory M. Cindrich, pilot;
 Capt. Jason S. Ramsey, pilot;
 Staff Sgt. Robert K. Evans, flight engineer;
 Staff Sgt. Scott N. Roberts, flight engineer;
 Staff Sgt. Stacy D. Bryant, loadmaster;
 Senior Airman Gary Bucknam, flight engineer;
 Senior Airman Frankie L. Walker, crew chief;
 Airman Justin R. Drager, loadmaster.
 None of their hometowns were released.
 09-15-97 1859EDT
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