Michael Leinbach - Bringing Columbia Home - The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

In late March, one helicopter pilot misjudged the terrain in which he was landing and damaged his helicopter. Ed Mango said, “No one was hurt, but that started us thinking that maybe we shouldn’t be landing to pick up things.”

Luck ran out just a few days later, on the afternoon of March 27.

Pilot Jules “Buzz” Mier was flying his Bell 407 helicopter over the Angelina National Forest, near the town of Broaddus and the Sam Rayburn Reservoir. Mier was a Vietnam veteran with more than one thousand hours of combat flight experience and more than eight thousand hours of overall flight time. He had served as a flight instructor at Fort Rucker, Alabama, while also flying Medevac missions with the Alabama Air National Guard. Most recently, he had been flying tourists around the Grand Canyon.

Sitting up front with Mier was search manager Charles Krenek of the Texas Forest Service. Krenek had twenty-six years of experience as an aviation specialist and a wildland firefighter. A resident of Lufkin, Krenek was well-known and well liked by the forest service community in East Texas.

In the back of the chopper were three members of the search party. Matt Tschacher was with the US Forest Service from South Dakota. The technical experts from KSC were Richard Lange, a space shuttle fuel cell cryogenics support worker with United Space Alliance, and Ronnie Dale, with NASA’s Safety and Process Assurance Branch.

After stopping for lunch and refueling, the crew took off at 3:15 p.m. on their second mission of the day. About an hour into the flight, just barely above the treetops, the helicopter developed a problem. William Dickerson, a local resident, was on a fishing trip in the vicinity with his nephew. They saw the helicopter fly over, and its engine suddenly went silent. [5] Christopher Freeze, “The ‘Columbia’ Debris Recovery Helo Crash, March 27, 2003,” www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/STS107-N175PA.htm .

The helicopter hit nose first into the crown of a large oak tree in swampy Ayish Bayou. [6] Greg Cohrs email to Jonathan Ward. The cockpit was crushed, killing Mier and Krenek instantly. All of the men in the rear of the helicopter were seriously injured—but they survived.

Dickerson and his nephew found the helicopter’s wreckage. They helped the three survivors out of the swamp and to the side of a nearby road, and then went to call for help.

Doug Hamilton from the US Forest Service and Sheriff Tom Maddox were among the first people on the scene after Dickerson’s phone call. They met the three injured men and learned what had happened. Hamilton and several other men waded back into the woods, through water that was several feet deep in places, to find the partially submerged helicopter. They located the bodies of Mier and Krenek in the wreckage. There was no way to bring them out of the woods and the swamp without assistance.

Marsha Cooper and Felix Holmes heard Hamilton’s call. They brought a bulldozer and several all-terrain vehicles as close as they could to the accident site. By knocking over pine trees with his bulldozer, Holmes built a makeshift path for the four-wheelers to reach the scene.

The accident dealt a devastating blow to the Texas Forest Service, the US Forest Service, and the East Texas community. Residents could scarcely fathom that one of their favorite sons had given his life in the search for Columbia .

Crowds packed Krenek’s funeral service in Lufkin. One attendee estimated nearly one thousand people were on hand, in a church built to hold perhaps four hundred. [7] Interview with Ed Mango. NASA’s astronaut corps was well represented. They understood the magnitude of the sacrifice made by these men and their community for the space program.

Having attended the memorial services for their colleagues on Columbia ’s crew just one month earlier, the astronauts could not help but observe how the families of the fallen crewmen and the community reacted to the accident. Dom Gorie noticed Krenek’s wife Charlotte singing during the service, and he met her afterward. He was moved by the strength of her faith in such a tragic circumstance. Gorie said, “If she could stand up and sing at a service like that after losing her husband, it gave you confidence to do anything. If somebody can endure that and press on, we could certainly press on with whatever task that was put in front of us. It was powerful.”

Gorie also noted that no one appeared to be voicing regrets or blame. No one believed that these men lost their lives doing something insignificant. Rather, the community regarded it as a sacrifice to an important undertaking. It proved that the people of East Texas were doing their utmost to help NASA return to flight, no matter the personal cost.

Now that they had given the lives of one of their own men to the cause, it was more important than ever to ensure that the task was worthwhile—that these two men and the crew of Columbia had not died in vain.

The motto that had been circulating since the early days of the recovery effort now seemed even more poignant. Their mission became our mission took on a much deeper meaning for the citizens of East Texas. They were now inextricably part of the Columbia story—their own blood mixed with the blood of NASA’s astronauts.

Ed Mango, astronauts Jerry Ross, Dom Gorie, and John Herrington, Dave Whittle, and a representative from FEMA attended Buzz Mier’s funeral service several days later in a chapel on the rim of the Grand Canyon. Ross spoke at the service and gave items of appreciation in tribute to Mier’s family members. It was a fitting commemoration for a man who had dedicated his life to serving his country.

The crash caused an immediate stand-down in air operations for an investigation of the accident. The NTSB recovered the helicopter and tested its engine. The problem was traced to a failure of a component in the fuel control unit. Fuel had just stopped flowing into the engine. Contributing to the accident was lack of a suitable place for Mier to make a forced landing. [8] Freeze, “Debris Recovery Helo Crash.”

Many of NASA’s searchers were reluctant to fly in helicopters after the accident. They felt it was too dangerous. The NTSB reminded the leaders in Lufkin that it made no sense to risk people’s lives in a debris salvage operation. FEMA suggested terminating the air search efforts altogether.

NASA was reluctant to abandon the air operations, though. The leadership team eventually worked out a compromise that would enable them to continue helicopter searches safely. First, flights were to be at a higher altitude, to give the pilots time to recover from emergency situations and find a clear place to land. Second, there would be no more landings to pick up debris. Spotters were to note an object’s position and call in a ground search team. Finally, operations would be concentrated farther to the west in the debris field, where there was less forest, and where debris from Columbia ’s left wing and aft structure was more likely to be found. With these changes made to the mission profile, air searches resumed on April 10. [9] Interview with Ed Mango.

The accident also resulted in three safety recommendations from the NTSB to the FAA addressing the problem that caused the crash. As a result, no further crashes of Bell 407 helicopters have occurred worldwide due to the same type of failure. [10] Freeze, “Debris Recovery Helo Crash.”

Even with the temporary stand-down in helicopter flights, the search effort continued at an intense pace. Everyone was still incredibly busy, but gone was the sense of chaos from the first weeks of the recovery effort. [11] Interview with Jeff Angermeier. As time went by, the areas of interest in the ground search changed. The first six weeks’ searches were focused in the area between Nacogdoches and Hemphill. By April, the emphasis had shifted to the area around Corsicana, where pieces of the shuttle’s tile and wing leading edge materials were being discovered. [12] Interview with Ed Mango.