REMSCHEID, WEST GERMANY, DEC. 9 (FRIDAY) -- A U.S. Air Force A10 Thunderbolt ground attack jet crashed into a
apartment buildings in a densely populated working-class district of
Remscheid, located 40 miles north of Bonn. It left 11 buildings damaged,
nine of them severely, said Klaus Schoenbach, head of the city's
disaster task force.
West Germany's Air Force suspended low-level flying exercises until
the end of the year, and the government urged its NATO allies to do the
same. The U.S. Air Force command at Ramstein said American military
training flights would be suspended until Tuesday in memory of the
victims. West German Defense Minister Rupert Scholz curtailed a visit to
Washington. In an televised interview before leaving Washington, he
warned against using the accident as a political vehicle to criticize
the NATO presence in West Germany. "This sort of reasoning takes matters
too far," he said. "We should not forget that the American troops in
West Germany are there to help us preserve our security."
The plane was carrying 1,000 rounds of 30-mm training ammunition,
according to U.S. Air Force spokesmen and local authorities, who said
they believed that some of the rounds of ammunition exploded in the
burning wreckage. The accident was the 13th involving aircraft of the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization in the last nine months in West
Germany and the second one this year in which a fallen U.S. Air Force
jet killed German civilians. On March 31, a U.S. Air Force F16 crashed
in Forst, killing the pilot and an elderly man on the ground.
Yesterday's accident is certain to add pressure on NATO authorities
to reduce military training flights over West Germany. The crash also
was likely to fuel general resentment against the large military
presence and regular war games in this country, NATO's principal
front-line state.
Memories still are fresh of the disaster at the Aug. 28 air show at
the U.S. air base in Ramstein, where 70 persons were killed when three
Italian Air Force jets collided during an aerial stunt and one crashed
in a crowd of spectators. The West German government announced a
permanent ban on military stunt flying in the wake of the crash.
Yesterday, Eduard Heussen, spokesman of the left-of-center opposition
Social Democratic Party, demanded a full investigation of the Remscheid
crash and said it underlined the danger to the civilian population posed
by military flights over residential areas.
The Social Democrats called formally for a ban on all low-level
military training flights in West Germany shortly after the Ramstein
disaster.
The plane in yesterday's accident was assigned to the 81st Tactical
Fighter Wing based in Bentwaters, England, and was of a type used
primarily to support infantry by attacking enemy tanks.
It was flying out of the West German airfield at Norvenich, where
there is a U.S. detachment, the U.S. Air Force said. British-based U.S.
Air Force jets regularly train in West Germany, which would probably be
the principal battleground in the event of war.
Witnesses quoted by news agencies said the plane flew very low over
the town and hit the top floor of an apartment building. There
reportedly was fog in the area at the time of the crash, 1:30 p.m. (7:30
a.m. EST).
The pilot was identified by the Air Force as Capt. Michael P. Foster,
34. His parachute hung from a tree not far from the crash site.
The other four persons killed were identified only as being two male
construction workers, a male postal employee, and a woman, the sources
said.
Of the 19 persons injured, four were severely burned, the sources
said, adding that the death toll may rise either with the deaths of one
or more of the injured or possibly with the discovery of additional
bodies in the rubble.
"It raced over my head at a height of about {50 feet} . . . and came
down like a huge fireball," said Fritz Hesse, who was working on his
garage roof.
The West German Defense Ministry earlier this year ordered a small
cutback, less than 5 percent, in low-level military training flights
because of popular discontent over the noise they cause and the danger
they pose. But NATO maintains that its pilots need training in low-level
flying, which is designed to avoid enemy radar, over the terrain that
they would have to defend in a war.
Criticism of NATO's military presence in West Germany has grown
partly because fears have receded of the threat posed by the Soviet
Union and its Warsaw Pact allies.
