U.S. Navy officials have identified the two pilots in Sunday’s crash of a T-45 Goshawk as Lt. Patrick Ruth and Lt. J.G. Wallace Burch, both based at NAS Meridian with the VT-7 training squadron. Lt. Ruth, the instructor pilot, 31 years old, was from Metairie, Louisiana. He previously flew the E-2 Hawkeye with the VAW-126 Seahawks, a Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron. Lt. J.G. Burch was 25 years old from Horn Lake, Mississippi.
The crash near Tellico Plains, Tennessee, follows months of safety stand-downs, restricted flight envelope operations and a return to full flight operations late this summer. Pilots in the T-45, the Navy’s initial jet training platform, had reported a spate of difficult-to-connect physiological issues, seemingly all related to the aircraft’s oxygen system. A group of roughly 100 instructor pilots reportedly refused the fly the aircraft until the Navy took action to resolve the issue. During the summer, flight operations were limited to currency flights for instructor pilots with a maximum altitude of 5,000 feet. Similar problems have been reported with the Navy’s F/A-18 and multiple service variants of the F-35. No information on likely causes of the crash has been released by the Navy.
