On Sun, 22 Apr 2001, Spike Jones wrote:
> previously that day. He apparently misjudged the
> intercept and his vertical stabilizer struck the
> outboard left propeller onthe EP-3. The U.S. plane
> was in straight and level flight on autopilot at
> the time. The fighter broke into two pieces and
> plunged into the sea. TheU.S. plane rolled to the
> left almost inverted, the pilot lost control and
> they began to lose altitude. The Chinese fighter
Interesting. The strike and the P-3 roll could have been near
simultaneous, so the lost fighter's wingman may very well honestly believe
that the roll occured first and the collision second...particularly if he
wasn't paying very close attention and was a distance away.
Of course this doesn't eliminate the fact that by the "rules of the road"
the P-3 had right of way.
steve
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:59:51 MDT