Air Force bomber crashes in Kentucky; crew survives
     MARION, Ky. - Feb 18, 1998 7:01 p.m. EST -- Four crew members of
 an Air Force bomber on a training mission parachuted to safety mo-
 ments before the plane crashed and exploded Wednesday in a muddy cow
 field in western Kentucky.
     The plane flew about 10 miles after the crew members ejected.
     Two walked to a phone and called for help, while another was
 found walking on a road. The fourth's parachute caught in a tree and
 he suffered head and neck injuries. All four were taken to the hos-
 pital; their conditions were not immediately known.
     The B-1B bomber was flying out of Dyess Air Force Base near
 Abilene, Texas, when it went down near Mattoon, a rural area five
 miles northeast of Marion near the Ohio River, said First Lt. Eric
 Elliott of Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
     The bomber was not being dispatched to the Persian Gulf and was
 not carrying munitions, Air Force officials said.
    Military police from Fort Campbell, Ky., were securing the scene.
 There was no immediate word as to a cause.  State police said the
 plane went down around 1:15 p.m.
     Mark Williams, who lives about a quarter mile away, said he was
 picking up his mail when he heard an explosion, looked up and saw a
 mushroom-shaped cloud. The blast shook his pickup truck.
     Williams drove to the crash site and said the biggest piece of
 wreckage could fit in the bed of his pickup, while the rest was
 reduced to pieces slightly larger than a dinner plate.
     Jamie Riley saw the plane pass over the town of Mexico, about
 14 miles from the crash site, and told the weekly Crittenden Press
 that the bomber was about 200 feet above the treetops.
     "I don't see how it was high enough for anybody to bail out,"
 Riley said.
     Beverly Herrin told the newspaper the engines quit near Marion.
     "I heard it roaring and looked toward Marion," he said. "By the
 time it came into sight, everything was quiet. It was gliding at
 about a 20-degree angle."
     The B-1B "Lancer" bomber, one of three long-range heavy bombers
 in the Air Force arsenal, has adjustable, swept-back wings and can
 fly intercontinental bombing missions without refueling.
     Designed in the 1970s as a nuclear bomb-dropper, the plane has
 been converted since then for conventional missions and is being
 deployed to the Mideast for the first time in a potential combat
 role.
     Last September, a pilot's attempt to perform an uncommon but
 permissible maneuver led to a crash of a B-1B bomber that killed
 all four people aboard.
     The Air Force reported in December that the pilot of the $200
 million plane was making a sharp right turn during a Sept. 19
 training mission on the Montana prairie when the plane neared stall
 speed and crashed. The technique is uncommon, but not forbidden.
     That crash was the sixth military air disaster in a seven-day
 period, and it prompted an unprecedented 24-hour grounding of mili-
 tary planes for safety training.
     However, at 1.37 crashes per 100,000 flying hours in the fiscal
 year ending Sept. 30, the Air Force reported it had its fourth
 safest year ever.
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                   Four killed in Navy helicopter
     JOHNSONDALE, Calif. Feb. 18 - A military helicopter on a search
 and rescue training mission crashed in central California's Sequoia
 National Forest on Wednesday, killing at least four people.
     Sheriff's Lt. Mike Gutsch said the Huey, from the China Lake
 Naval Weapons Center, "basically burned to the ground" after crash-
 ing near the Kern River in a remote section of the southern Sierra.
     Five Navy personnel were aboard, but the fifth person's fate was
 not known.
     "Four crew members have been confirmed dead, with one remaining
 unaccounted for at this time," the weapons center stated in a news
 release.
     The search for the fifth person will resume Thursday morning.
 Rescue workers were unable to keep looking at night because the
 crash site is too rugged.
     Gutsch said a citizen saw the helicopter, which can hold nine
 passengers, on the ground just before noon with smoke coming out of
 the aircraft.
     "Then it burst into flames," he added.
     The helicopter was fully engulfed in flames when California
 forestry, sheriff's deputies and U.S. forest personnel arrived after
 the crash was reported at 12:28 p.m.
     "We have no idea what caused the crash," Schutza said. Weather
 was clear and there was no wind, she added.
     All the victims were Navy personnel from China Lake, about 60
 miles east across the Mojave Desert from the crash site. Their names
 were not released pending notification of next-of-kin.
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