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The old T-41, he argued, taught students to fly only straight and level, and didn't teach cadets the building blocks of military flying, including a dizzying array of loops, rolls and spins. With the T-3, the Air Force could offer what it called an "enhanced flight-screening program," which could pinpoint "those cadets who have the basic aptitude to become Air Force pilots." McPeak encouraged his service to buy a trainer that could spin, the wing tips tracing a circle after the plane has lost, at least temporarily, its ability to remain aloft. It is a maneuver so dangerous that Air Force fighter pilots are under orders to eject if one occurs. But McPeak believes that a pilot who doesn't fear spins--and knows how to get out of them--is a better pilot, even if they're done only during training.
The Air Force brass, eager to please the boss, bought the 1,750-lb. English-manufactured Slingsby T-3 and made it mandatory for all cadets to fly the craft if they want to earn their wings. It is a tiny plane, half the length and one-tenth the weight of the F-16, the Air Force's smallest fighter. But its standard, 160-hp engine was not powerful enough to do spins and loops in the thin Rocky Mountain air over the mile-high academy. So a 7.7-liter, 260-hp engine was crammed into the 25-ft.-long plastic fuselage. With its enhanced power, the two-seat T-3 can fly 200 m.p.h. and make gut-wrenching turns in which the crew endures up to six times the force of gravity.
But the new T-3 spooked some instructors shortly after cadets started flying it in January 1995. At a meeting a week before the first crash, several grumbled that the T-3 lacked parachutes. "It's crazy that we don't fly with parachutes," said one of the instructors present, Captain Dan Fischer. "It's an FAA regulation if you do acrobatics." Air Force superiors said the service didn't have to obey Federal Aviation Administration rules even though the T-3, unlike most Air Force planes, is registered with the FAA. Back at his apartment, Fischer was blunter. "Someone's going to die before they get rid of these spins," he told his roommate, also a T-3 pilot. "And it's not going to be me."
His foresight didn't save him. On Feb. 22, 1995, Fischer, 29, and Cadet Mark Dostal, 20, were killed when their T-3 corkscrewed into the ground about 50 miles east of the academy. Dostal, of Moraga, Calif., was a junior at the academy, where he had racked up scholastic and athletic honors. "Mark wanted to fly from the time he was a little boy," says his mother Shirley. "He thought his best chance to fly was to go to the academy." He had spent 11 hours learning to fly the T-3.
The Air Force investigation concluded that Dostal put the plane into a spin and that Fischer fumbled the recovery because the Air Force had not adequately trained him. The crash report said the engine was running while the plane plunged a mile in 30 sec., in 17 ever tightening spirals, into a snow-covered pasture. Yet witnesses told investigators the plane was silent as it came down. The Air Force grounded the T-3s for a week. And when they resumed flying, spins were banned.