Here’s what we know about the type of Navy training jet that crashed in Lake Worth
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Crash of a Navy training jet
A Sunday afternoon turned into chaos for a neighborhood in Lake Worth.
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The aircraft that crashed in a Lake Worth neighborhood on Sept. 19, 2021 — a Navy T-45C Goshawk jet trainer built by Boeing — was assigned to the Naval Air Station in Kingsville, about 42 miles southwest of Corpus Christi.
An instructor pilot and a student aviator were conducting a routine training flight originating from Corpus Christi International Airport, according to a Navy statement. The Chief of Naval Air Training is based at Naval Air Station Corpus Christi.
Navy and Marine Corps pilots, along with naval flight officers, fly the T-45C during the intermediate and advanced portions of their pilot training programs for jet carrier aviation and tactical strike missions, according to a description from the Chief of Naval Air Training. In addition, naval flight officers use the plane during the advanced tactical maneuvering stage of their training.
The single-engine jet, used by pilots before they begin training on the aircraft they will fly for the Navy, is built for two: an instructor and a student pilot. Lt. Michelle Tucker, public affairs officer for the Chief of Naval Air Training, said the T-45C is used every day at two training wings in the U.S., including in Kingsville, Texas.
Tucker said the Navy does maintain data about training incidents, but could not immediately provide more information about the frequency of training accidents in T-45C jets. In May 2021, two training jets collided in mid-air over Ricardo, Texas, about nine miles south of Kingsville. Both sets of student pilots and flight instructors survived the accident, with one pilot sustaining minor injuries, according to a Navy statement.
Two months before, in March, the Navy reported a single-plane incident where a student pilot and instructor ejected from their T-45C before the jet crashed three miles from a landing field in Orange Grove, Texas. The two occupants suffered minor injuries, and local emergency services extinguished a small brush fire, according to a Navy press release. Both the Orange Grove and the Ricardo incidents are under investigation by the Navy.
The Naval Safety Center leads those investigations and was dispatched to Lake Worth to provide on-site support, Tucker said.
“They’ll just try to figure out what happened and why and hopefully prevent this from happening in the future,” Tucker said by phone shortly after the crash.
According to the U.S. Naval Institute’s online news source, the most recent fatal T-45 incident took place near Tellico Plains, Tennessee, in October 2017. A Navy investigation found that aggressive behaviors, including “thrill-seeking maneuvers at low altitudes,” caused the crash that killed Patrick Ruth and Wallace Burch.
At the time, the military did not recommend any punitive actions due to leadership changes at the training wing in Meridian, Mississippi, according to USNI News. Instead, the Navy investigation report said a number of corrective actions were taken, including efforts to ensure that all instructors were following the syllabus and checking in-flight data to see if unsafe behavior was taking place in the air.
The T-45C made its first flight in October 1997, according to a history of the aircraft on Boeing’s website. The T-45C replaced the T-2C Buckeye trainer and the TA-4J trainer with an integrated training system that includes the aircraft, operational flight simulators, classroom learning and more, according to a Navy description.
The plane is based off a jet trainer created by the United Kingdom’s Royal Air Force in 1974, which inspired Boeing’s predecessor company, McDonnell Douglas, to develop the T-45A Goshawk in 1978.
Boeing ended up building 221 training jets for the Navy and delivered the final T-45 in November 2009. In August 2010, the company celebrated the one millionth flight hour of the T-45 Goshawk at the U.S. Navy’s Cecil Field in Jacksonville.
This story was originally published September 19, 2021 at 4:12 PM.
