From: cyronwode@aol.com (Cyronwode)
ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (Reuter) - Air Force searchers Thursday found the body of a pilot whose F-117A ``stealth'' fighter crashed on a sacred Indian burial ground near the New Mexico-Arizona border, the Defense Department said.
Holloman Air Force Base, where plane was based, said Thursday the pilot was Capt. Kenneth Levens, from the 9th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Wing. The base did not provide Levens' age or other personal details about him.
``It landed in a sacred Indian burial ground,'' Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon told reporters in Washington when asked about Wednesday night's crash. ``The pilot has been found and is dead, I am sorry to report.''
Kirtland Air Force Base spokesman Lt. Dave DuBois said the crash occurred seven miles south of a Zuni Indian Reservation. The reservation, with its own government, police and other services, is located about 300 miles west of Albuquerque, N.M.
The reservation, with about 9,400 residents, is comprised of more than 4,700 acres, a spokeswoman at the Zuni tribal office said. She said there are two burial grounds and she had no information on the exact location of the plane crash.
No one on the ground was hurt, officials said.
Bacon said the cause of the crash of the single-seat, radar-avoiding jet -- the type used with devastating effect against Iraq in the 1991 Gulf War -- was not known and an Air Force board would investigate the incident.
The Air Force said the the plane crashed at 10:30 p.m. local time Wednesday while on a routine training flight. Contact with the $45 million aircraft, built by Lockheed, was lost five minutes before the crash.
Bob Pepper, a spokesman for Holloman, said the wreckage of the F-117A ``Nighthawk'' had been located south of Gallup, N.M., and that emergency response forces from Kirtland Air Force Base near Albuquerque were on the scene.
The F-117A fighter was the first designed with so-called stealth technology, using sharp angles and special materials to absorb radar signals or reflect them away from detectors. The planes, flying at night and using laser-guided bombs for pinpoint accuracy, were used to pound Iraqi forces and other targets in the 1991 Gulf War.