Air Force Lt. Col. Morris “Moose” Fontenot Jr. departed Barnes Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts at 8:06 a.m. on Aug. 27, making a long flight in his F-15C Eagle fighter jet to get a radar upgrade at a naval air base in New Orleans. A veteran pilot, he was a flight instructor and the inspector general of the 104th Fighter Wing at Barnes, and a leader widely respected for his willingness to help others.
Fontenot departed Barnes, in Westfield, Mass., uneventfully and cut a course over the Eastern United States. His jet, capable of reaching supersonic speeds, quickly reached a flight level of about 43,000 feet, and held there for about 33 minutes.
At some point, however, something went wrong. Using his call sign, Fontenot radioed the Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center in Leesburg, Va., at 8:56 a.m: “Hawk 11 declaring emergency.” Seconds later, an air traffic controller asked for an update on his status, and he replied: “Affirm. Standby.”
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[After crash in Virginia, a brief history of F-15C fighter jet mishaps]
It was the last anyone heard of the pilot. He crashed two minutes later into a field in rural Deerfield, Va., reaching supersonic speed before impact. The crash scorched trees in the George Washington National Forest and left a crater 20 feet deep, according to the findings of an Air Force investigation released Monday.
The incident underscores the dangers U.S. fighter pilots can face, even in seemingly routine missions. The investigation found that Fontenot was likely incapacitated sometime between 8:56 a.m., when he radioed seeking help, and 8:58, when his plane crashed. Radar data shows Fontenot did not attempt to pull the jet out of a dive, and was initially at an altitude sufficient to eject and parachute to safety.
The Air Force released this chart showing the rate of the jet’s descent:
“With no eyewitness accounts, surviving aircrew members, detailed emergency calls, or flight data recordings, and with minimal information from analysis of components recovered at the mishap site, the specific reason [the pilot] became incapacitated could not be determined,” the Air Force found.
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One variable in the crash: The Air Force found that at some point during the flight, Fontenot’s environmental control system (ECS) signaled a rise in temperature in the plane’s avionics bay.
“This type of warning does not indicate an immediate threat to the aircraft and may result in a rise in cockpit temperature to the point where the pilot may become uncomfortable,” the report said. An experienced pilot would typically bring the plane to a lower altitude, possibly even using an “aggressive descent,” it added.
The plane’s environmental control system was recovered and analyzed after the crash. Investigators found that while the ECS warning went off, the system was “still functioning sufficiently to provide cooling and pressurization air for the cockpit.”
Fontenot, of Longmeadow, Mass., was mourned by hundreds of members of the 104th Fighter Wing last year. A married father with two high school-age girls, he transferred from the active-duty Air Force to the Air National Guard to settle into a permanent home for his family, according to MassLive.com.
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“Since the day of the accident, the Barnes family has worked to provide comfort and support to the Fontenot family in order to help them through this trying time and though our thoughts and prayers continue to be with them, we are hopeful that the completion of the this investigation will bring a level of closure to the family,” the fighter wing’s commander, Col. James Keefe, said in a statement released Monday.
Fontenot was buried at the Air Force Academy in Colorado in October.
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