Fairchild Crews Make Solemn Flight Home Air National Guard Members Return After Crash That Killed Four

To come home, the arc of their jet passed by the spot where their friends died.

Maj. Dale Storr was in the cockpit. If he wanted, he could see the darkened ground where a Spokane-based KC-135 tanker crashed on Jan. 13 in northwest Germany.

“I didn’t want to look,” Storr said.

Instead of the ruin on the ground, Storr focused on the task ahead - bringing 25 members of the Fairchild-based 141st Air Refueling Wing home to Spokane on Wednesday after a terrible week in Germany.

The swampy forest beyond the end of the runway at Geilenkirchen Air Base fell out of sight, but no one in the tanker could forget the four friends and co-workers who had seen their last moment at that place.

On Jan. 3, there were 29 members of the 141st sent to Germany for routine training. On Wednesday, only 25 returned home. The flight back to Fairchild was their first time in the air since the accident.

Storr is a combat veteran who was shot down during the Gulf War and taken prisoner by the Iraqis. He said every pilot knows if you fly long enough, you will lose friends to accidents. It’s a fact of life.

“But you’re never ready for it,” he said Wednesday.

Killed in the Jan. 13 crash were Maj. David Fite, pilot; Capt. Kenneth Thiele, co-pilot; Maj. Matthew Laiho, navigator and Tech. Sgt. Richard Visintainer, boom operator.

Fite lived in Bellevue, Wash., the other three in Spokane.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

The remains of the crew were flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Tuesday morning for identification. From there, they will be flown on commercial airliners to locations their families choose.

The flight back in the same model plane that crashed was part of the healing process - especially for the two surviving flight crews, said Col. John Hartnett, who went to Germany over the weekend to assist in the return.

“It was a big deal to get back into the plane,” he said. “Everyone wanted to get into the seat for part of the flight. Each one was able to get behind the yoke again.”

As Storr put it: “It’s the best therapy there is.”

“We know talking to psychologists, they say get back on the horse,” Hartnett said.

Training flights for the 141st out of Fairchild resumed Wednesday as well. They had been suspended - as is routine after an accident - since last week. Wing Commander Col. Jim Wynne hopes the unit will be up to its full flying schedule - roughly four flights daily - by Monday.

“We are in no rush to get to where we were before,” Wynne said. “We want to make sure our air crews and people who do maintenance are comfortable and ready to resume our mission.”

But this week, grief slows all.

About 200 friends, family and members of the 141st gathered at Fairchild to greet the group returning from Germany. They stood by a massive yellow and brown hangar on the flight line, waiting in the breezy cold as the tanker taxied home.

Three F-15 fighters from the Oregon Air National Guard made a slow flyby in honor of the dead. The jets rumbled past then faded into the gray of the low-lying clouds.

Once the tanker stopped, the crowd washed forward, silent and solemn. The hatch opened and there stood a wreath, presented at a memorial service in a German church on Monday for the fallen crew. Twice as many people stood outside the church as squeezed inside for the service, crew members said.

Guard members were overwhelmed by the compassion shown them from other military personnel and residents of the surrounding villages where the accident happened.

“People offered us their houses, their cars and meals,” said Lt. Col. Landry Smallfoot, a navigator of one of the flight crews that went to Germany. “The support they gave us was incredible,” he said.

But at most, the support could only give a pause from thoughts of the accident.

The morning of the crash, the tanker had flown safely.

Mechanics and other ground technicians often ride on refueling flights to check on equipment, Smallfoot said. On that afternoon flight, however, the crew consisted only of the absolute minimum of four people.

“We all go through that `It could have been me. Why wasn’t it me?”’ Smallfoot said. “That’s a tough thing to go through.”

MEMORIAL A public memorial service for the airmen killed in the KC-135 tanker crash over Germany on Jan. 13 will be at 10 a.m. Friday at the Spokane Opera House. Spokane Transit will provide a free shuttle service from the Veteran’s Memorial Arena parking lot to the service. The Washington Air National Guard has established an Air Crew Survivor’s Fund at U.S. Bank’s Fairchild branch. Deposits can be made at any U.S. Bank branch. Money from the fund will be equally divided among the four victim’s families.