The T-3's introduction to Air Force training was a particularpassion of General Merrill McPeak, the service's chief of staffin the early 1990s. Whitten Peters ordered a comprehensive reviewof the aircraft's purchase, testing and operation.
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And in December,after TIME asked a series of questions about the T-3, acting AirForce Secretary F. The Air Force hasgrounded the 110-plane fleet for 10 different modifications inan effort to solve the mechanical problems.
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Its brakes are sopoor that the Air Force has banned student solo flights out ofconcern that a novice can't bring the plane to a full stopwithout rolling off the end of the runway. Its single engine hasfailed 66 times, nearly half of them during flight or atperilous moments like takeoffs and landings. A TIMEinvestigation, based on dozens of interviews as well as a reviewof Air Force documents obtained under the Freedom of InformationAct, suggests that the T-3 is a plane too perilous for veteranpilots, much less beginners, to fly. That decision is starting to look like a mistake.
But in 1995, the Air Force Academysaid goodbye to the plodding T-41 and its sturdy safety record,replacing it with the muscular T-3. TheT-3's crash record is all the more startling because from 1964to 1994, cadets flew the trainer's predecessor, the T-41,without a single fatality. Six people - three cadets andtheir instructor pilots - have died in three crashes of the T-3Firefly trainer since the planes began flying there in 1995. Air ForceAcademy in Colorado Springs, Colo. In fact, it's not a jetat all but the first plane fledgling pilots fly - the powerful,propeller-driven trainer flown by cadets at the U.S. Air Force todayisn't the screaming F-15 Eagle, the Baghdad-bombing F-117Nighthawk or the thunderous B-1 Lancer. The most dangerous plane to fly in the U.S. He told her that her son's airplane had crashed earlierthat day, killing him instantly. I want you home inone piece." Forty-eight hours later, an Air Force officerknocked at the door of Weber's Miami town house, rousing her outof bed. "When we land,I'm really sweating." Terri recalls listening to her firstbornin her darkened living room and saying, "It sounds like thereare a lot of problems, so be really careful. His plane's enginehad unexpectedly conked out in mid-flight, forcing theinstructor to grab the controls and make an emergency landing."Sometimes it's scary," Pace said over the phone.
(TIME, Jan.12) - Terri Weber's last conversation with her son Pace took placejust as his dream of becoming an Air Force pilot was taking off.But she heard something besides excitement in her son's voice."Our planes are having a lot of mechanical problems," Pace toldhis mom from his Air Force Academy dorm last June, four daysbefore he was due home on his summer break. The Deadly Trainer Air Force cadets are dying in a new aircraft with a dubious mission and many mechanical problems Click here for more political coverage from TIME magazine.
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