JETS COLLIDE; 2 KILLED IN CRASH OVER EDWARDS AFB.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

Two airmen - one British, one American - were killed Wednesday when their T-38 trainer jet collided with an F-16 fighter during a flight test over Edwards Air Force Base.

The two jets - both small, highly maneuverable craft capable of supersonic speeds - collided while accompanying a B-1B bomber dropping unarmed practice bombs over the base's precision bombing range, Air Force officials said.

``I'm very saddened by what happened today,'' Col. Robbie Robinson, commander of Edwards' 412th Test Wing, told reporters at the base several hours after the crash. ``They were both fine gentlemen.''

Wednesday's crash came a month after an Air Force ``stand-down'' ordered by Defense Secretary William Cohen following a spate of military aircraft crashes that killed 35 people. Edwards pilots halted training flights Sept. 22, like Air Force crews across the United States, to review safety procedures.

An Air Force panel will investigate the crash, but no conclusions are expected to be reached for several months. The two units from which the F-16 and the T-38 came will stand down indefinitely as a result of the crash, but other Edwards units will continue flying, officials said.

Killed were Lt. Col. William R. Nusz, a flight-test engineer assigned to Edwards' 419th Flight Test Squadron, and Flight Lt. Leigh Alexander Fox, a Royal Air Force pilot participating in a pilot exchange program between the United States and Great Britain.

Both Fox and Nusz were married. Fox is survived by two young children, Robinson said.

The T-38 crashed about three miles south of the base's rocket propulsion laboratory in an creosote bush-dotted plain accessible only by four-wheel-drive vehicles. Its pilots ejected, but did not survive, officials said. Their bodies were found several miles away from their jet's wreckage.

Though missing about three feet of its left wing, the F-16 made it back to a runway on Rogers Dry Lake, in the center of the 300,000-acre base 85 miles north of Los Angeles. Neither of its two crew members was injured.

The F-16 crew was identified as Lt. Col. Richard Stevens, deputy commander of the 412th Operations Group and the F-16's pilot, and Capt. Nicole Blatt of the 412th Test Wing, both based at Edwards.

The collision occurred as the B-1B bomber and its two chase planes were wrapping up their test mission, officials said.

After the B-1B crew completed their bomb drop and closed the weapons bay doors, the F-16 came in close so its crew could check that the bomber had not been damaged by the falling bombs - the last test point of the mission. It was sometime after that the collision occurred, Air Force officials said.

The test mission was intended to certify the B-1B to drop a practice bomb called the BDU-33, a 25-pound bomb that is inert except for a shotgun charge on the nose used to help in marking where the bomb hits.

Air Force officials said they don't know yet why Fox and Nusz were killed despite ejecting from their crippled T-38. They said they also don't know exactly how high or how fast the planes were flying when they collided, but the mission profile called for them to be traveling at 550 mph at 2,700 feet altitude.

After the collision, Stevens, the F-16 pilot, checked his ability to control his aircraft, radioed in for instructions, and made the emergency landing on the lake bed.

``I talked to the pilot and he said he had no controllability problems in landing the aircraft,'' Robinson said. ``The pilot did a good job of recovering the aircraft after the collision.''

The F-16 was the same aircraft flown by aviation great Bob Hoover on Oct. 14 during the re-enactment of Chuck Yeager's breaking of the sound barrier 50 years ago.

Although the T-38s were designed as a trainer for teaching new Air Force pilots how to fly supersonic aircraft, the aircraft are used at Edwards in a variety of roles, including accompanying other planes on test flights. F-16 fighters at Edwards are also used in that role.

Fox had been at Edwards since July 1996 as part of a three-year pilot exchange program. He was a graduate of France's test pilot school.

``He was well respected and liked,'' Robinson said.

Nusz graduated from the Test Pilot School in 1984 and was the director of engineering for the B-1B testing.

RECENT CRASHES AT EDWARDS AIR FORCE

Nov. 12, 1996: A pilotless NASA high-altitude research plane called Theseus went out of control, broke apart and crashed on a small dry lake bed northeast of Rogers Dry Lake.

April 21, 1996: A pilotless Air Force reconnaissance prototype called DarkStar stalled after takeoff, hit the ground and exploded.

Jan. 20, 1995: A German pilot parachuted to safety from a joint German-American research jet called an X-31 after it went out of control because a speed sensor iced up.

Aug. 16, 1994: An Air Force instructor pilot and a Swedish test pilot parachuted to safety after they were unable to pull their A-37 Dragonfly jet from a spin.

May 18, 1992: A Navy Mitsubishi MU2 cargo plane crashed on approach to the base's main runway, killing the pilot and a passenger and injuring seven more occupants.

April 25, 1992: An Advanced Tactical Fighter crash-landed and burned after losing control while flying at low level above a base runway. The Lockheed Corp. test pilot escaped with minor injuries.

Oct. 10, 1991: Three airmen died when a UH-1N helicopter crashed during a parachute drop.

Jan. 14, 1991: Two airmen died when a UH-1N helicopter crashed during a night training mission.

Oct. 7, 1988: A NASA pilot suffered a broken jaw when he ejected from a F/A-18 jet after its controls malfunctioned. The jet crashed in the desert north of Boron.

May 22, 1987: Two Air Force officers and two civilians died in a midair collision between a T-38 jet and a Cessna taking photographs northwest of Mojave.

SOURCE: Air Force, NASA

CAPTION(S):

Photo, map, 3 boxes

PHOTO (color) Wreckage from of an Air Force T-38 jet litters the desert around Edwards Air Force Base after the plane went down Wednesday.

Associated Press

Box: Recent crashes at Edwards AFB (see text)

(2) Military crashes

(3) T-38 and F-16

Map: Edwards Air Force Base