Matt
07-19-2002, 2:13am
Oops...
MONAHANS, Texas (Reuters) - It may have been a stealth fighter, but it was not a stealth bomb.
Texan Dick Aker gazed in amazement on Wednesday at the foot-wide hole in the roof of his former daughter-in-law's house, made by a 25-pound dummy bomb without explosives that fell from an Air Force stealth fighter jet a day earlier. The town of Monahans is about 225 miles east of El Paso.
"No one in the house was even scratched," Aker said as officials from Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, New Mexico, investigated why an F-117 stealth fighter, known for its black color and radar-evading wedge shape, dropped three dummy training bombs in the Texas-New Mexico border region.
"The Air Force boys are over there right now," Aker said, "and they're having a heck of a time getting it out of the ground. It went in pretty deep."
Air Force officials said the two other inert bombs were dropped in the remote border region near Pecos, Texas, and Maljamar, New Mexico.
The Holloman base is in southern New Mexico, about 200 miles northwest of Monahans, which is about 40 miles east of a desert Air Force bombing range.
Holloman officials said one of the inert bombs that fell near Maljamar struck a roadway and has been recovered.
While Aker and family members were nervously chuckling about the incident, residents of the remote West Texas area are likely to be angered by the accident.
Ranchers have filed at least two lawsuits against the U.S. Air Force in recent years demanding that U.S. jets and those of a German air force contingent based at Holloman be barred from low-level flights. People living in the area say jets have routinely flown over their houses at altitudes ranging from 200 feet to 500 feet.
Two months ago a German air force crewman was killed and his flight partner was injured when their Tornado fighter jet crashed into the Lincoln National Forest north of Alamogordo, starting a forest fire. The flight partner ejected from the jet and has recovered from his injuries.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020718/od_nm/bomb_dc_1
MONAHANS, Texas (Reuters) - It may have been a stealth fighter, but it was not a stealth bomb.
Texan Dick Aker gazed in amazement on Wednesday at the foot-wide hole in the roof of his former daughter-in-law's house, made by a 25-pound dummy bomb without explosives that fell from an Air Force stealth fighter jet a day earlier. The town of Monahans is about 225 miles east of El Paso.
"No one in the house was even scratched," Aker said as officials from Holloman Air Force Base near Alamogordo, New Mexico, investigated why an F-117 stealth fighter, known for its black color and radar-evading wedge shape, dropped three dummy training bombs in the Texas-New Mexico border region.
"The Air Force boys are over there right now," Aker said, "and they're having a heck of a time getting it out of the ground. It went in pretty deep."
Air Force officials said the two other inert bombs were dropped in the remote border region near Pecos, Texas, and Maljamar, New Mexico.
The Holloman base is in southern New Mexico, about 200 miles northwest of Monahans, which is about 40 miles east of a desert Air Force bombing range.
Holloman officials said one of the inert bombs that fell near Maljamar struck a roadway and has been recovered.
While Aker and family members were nervously chuckling about the incident, residents of the remote West Texas area are likely to be angered by the accident.
Ranchers have filed at least two lawsuits against the U.S. Air Force in recent years demanding that U.S. jets and those of a German air force contingent based at Holloman be barred from low-level flights. People living in the area say jets have routinely flown over their houses at altitudes ranging from 200 feet to 500 feet.
Two months ago a German air force crewman was killed and his flight partner was injured when their Tornado fighter jet crashed into the Lincoln National Forest north of Alamogordo, starting a forest fire. The flight partner ejected from the jet and has recovered from his injuries.
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020718/od_nm/bomb_dc_1