From Staff Reports
A report issued last Wednesday suggests that the KC-130T plane crash that killed 15 Marines and one Navy Corpsman in July 2017 could have been avoided.
The plane went down in a soybean field along the Sunflower and Leflore County line near Itta Bena on July 10, 2017 around 4 p.m. in the afternoon during a routine cross country flight.
According to Military Times, a deteriorating propeller blade had become corroded years before the crash, but it either went undetected or was not addressed by military maintenance workers and was returned to the fleet in 2011, the report said.
This maintenance work was reportedly done at Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex.
The corrosion persisted over the course of the next six years, culminating in a crack that caused the blade to spin off and cut the fuselage.
The impact likely rendered the passengers unconscious immediately, military officials said this week, and the plane was left in three pieces along U.S. 82.
Maintenance records from 2011 no longer exist, according to reports, because Air Force policy at the time was to have such records destroyed after two years, so it is likely the military may never get to the bottom of what happened during the routine work.
This is one of a number of notable military air disasters that have taken place over the past few years.
A Lockheed WC-130H transport aircraft crashed back in May in Georgia.
Just this week, an F/A-18 fighter jet and a KC-130 refueling aircraft collided over the Pacific Ocean near Japan.
Two crewmembers were pulled from the water, one of those a fatality, while crews are presently searching for five others who went down with the planes.
The military’s report also commended the first responders from Sunflower and Leflore Counties.
Sunflower County Search & Rescue aided the military in the recovery of the bodies.
Local first responders also helped recover other items, including guns and ammunition from the soybean fields surrounding the plane crash. In the months and year following the crash, efforts were made to memorialize the military personnel who perished, including the Yanky 72 monument which was dedicated in Itta Bena this past July and sits in front of the MVSU campus.
The Moorhead Garden Club has dedicated considerable hours and labor to events and memorials.
The Garden Club’s bicentennial celebration in 2017 included a tribute to the fallen military men, and Moorhead now has a permanent monument of bricks, one for each serviceman, where The Southern Crosses the Yellow Dog.
