URBANA, Ohio (AP) -- A Dayton man watched helplessly as his
 single-engine vintage plane took off by itself, flew for two hours
 and crashed into a bean field 90 miles away Sunday. No one was hurt.
     It was a 1946 Aeronca Champ. (For Elvis)
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
           F-15 plunges into Atlantic; pilot OK
     VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. - November 24, 1997 11:53 a.m. EST - An F-15
 fighter crashed into the Atlantic Ocean Monday morning and the pilot
 ejected safely and was quickly rescued, the Air Force said.
     The plane went down at 9:45 a.m., about 60 to 70 miles off the
 coast from Oceana Naval Air Station, said Master Sgt. Kevin Walston,
 a spokesman for Langley Air Force Base, where the plane was based.
     The pilot floated on a raft for about a half hour until he was
 picked up by a Coast Guard helicopter, said Coast Guard spokesman
 Lt. Cmdr. John Fitzgerald.
     The cause of the crash was not immediately known.
     The pilot's name was not released. He is from the 94th Fighter
 Squadron, which just returned last week after a 45-day tour in Saudi
 Arabia.
     Earlier this month, an Air Force F-16C crashed near a school at
 Sidney, Texas. The pilot ejected safely and no one on the ground was
 injured.
     A Marine Corps Harrier jet crashed Oct. 24 in the sea off south-
 western Japan, but the pilot also survived without serious injury.
 Just two days earlier, an Air Force F-16 collided with a T-38 trainer
 near Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The F-16 landed safely but the
 T-38 crashed, killing both crewmen.
     And on Oct. 16, another Marine Harrier crashed near Fairborn,
 Ohio. The pilot ejected safely and no one on the ground was injured.
     In September, all branches of the military were ordered to hold
 a 24-hour safety "stand-down" and review training procedures because
 of a rash of accidents.
     That series of crashes started Sept. 13 when an Air Force C-141
 transport plane crashed off the coast of Africa after apparently
 colliding with another aircraft. The next day, an F-117A stealth
 fighter broke up during an air show in Maryland.
     The day after that, a Navy F-18 went down in Oman and a Marine
 Corps F-18 crashed off North Carolina. The same month, two planes
 from the New Jersey Air National Guard collided off the New Jersey
 coast and an Air Force B-1 bomber crashed in Montana, killing all
 four crew members.
     (The news media must review EVERYTHING! Jim Sanders)
 -------------------------------------------------------------------
                       U-2 flies over Iraq
     BAGHDAD -- November 24, 1997 09:47 a.m. EST -- A U.S. spy plane
 used by the United Nations flew over Iraq on Monday, in its first
 flight since the return of American arms inspectors, the official
 news agency INA announced.
     The Pentagon confirmed the U-2 report.
     "It spent a couple of hours over Iraq and is now out of Iraqi
 territory," Army Col. Richard Bridges told Reuters shortly after
 7 a.m.
     An Iraqi foreign ministry spokesman, quoted by INA, said the U-2
 plane entered Iraqi airspace from Saudi Arabia.  It headed for the
 southern region of Basra before heading for the border with Iran and
 flying north.
     The high-altitude reconnaissance plane was "out of range" of
 Iraq's anti-aircraft defenses, which were tracking the flight, he
 said.
    The spokesman condemned what he called the "irresponsible methods"
 of the United States and said America's military buildup in the Per-
 sian Gulf would "not intimidate Iraq."
    "America will discover one day that nobody is scared of its stick,
 which will eventually break by being used all the time in such an
 unjustifiable way, " he said.
    It was the first flight since Nov. 18 of the U-2, whose flights
 support the work of the U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) in charge
 of dismantling Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
    Also Monday, U.N. arms inspectors returned to work in Iraq for a
 third consecutive day, but one said they would not inspect sensitive
 sites or presidential property in the search for banned weapons.
    "Groups of permanent teams which belong to the Baghdad Monitoring
 and Verification Center have resumed their work this morning," Iraq's
 official news agency INA quoted a source at the Iraqi Monitoring
 Directorate as saying.
     He added that one of the eight teams concerned with maintaining
 observation cameras would visit 16 sites where there is permanent
 monitoring to check the cameras.
     He also said U.N. helicopters would fly two missions over Iraqi
 sites Monday.
     "We are not going to inspect presidential sites today," one
 inspector, who refused to give his name, told reporters.
     On Friday, UNSCOM inspectors returned to Baghdad, together with
 their U.S. colleagues who were expelled a week earlier, after Iraq
 lifted a three-week ban on U.S. members of the commission.
     Defense Secretary William Cohen said Sunday that the U-2 flights
 to detect activity at Iraqi sites would continue. Baghdad had threat-
 ened to shoot down such flights before agreeing to allow the U.S.
 inspectors back in the country.
     Iraq's ambassador to the United Nations, Nizar Hamdoon, said his
 country was likely to protest against any new U-2 flights but added:
 "I don't think we are going to shoot for the time being."
     Foreign Minister Mohammad Said al-Sahhaf has welcomed a French
 proposal for reconnaissance planes from several countries to be used
 "in rotation" to back up the work of UNSCOM.
 It was "no longer acceptable" for only the U-2 to be used, he said.
 ==
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