A Blue Angels pilot who died when his F/A-18 fighter jet crashed near Nashville, Tennessee, had wanted to fly since he was a child, relatives said.
A U.S. official identified the pilot killed Thursday as Marine Capt. Jeff Kuss. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
“It’s hard to put into words right now, but it’s beautiful that a person can live and die engaged in their life’s pursuits,” said his grandfather, Dolph Kuss, reached at his home in Durango, Colorado. “This was his dream since he was a child, to be an aviator, a flier.”
He choked back tears and said he was struggling to gather his thoughts.
“It’s hard to celebrate someone’s life in this way,” he said. “It is certainly a shock. Everything in life has its dangers, I guess.”
Kuss was married with two young children, his grandfather said.
It was the second fighter jet crash of the day for the military’s elite fighter jet performance teams. A member of the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds crashed in Colorado after a flyover for the Air Force Academy graduation where President Barack Obama spoke. That pilot ejected safely into a field.
Harry Gill, the town manager in Smyrna just outside Nashville, said Thursday that the Blue Angels pilot was the only casualty and no civilians on the ground were hurt.
The Navy said in a news release that the pilot was beginning to take off during an afternoon practice session for a weekend air show performance when the crash happened. Five other F/A-18 jets landed safely moments after the crash.
“My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends of the Blue Angels after this tragic loss. I know that the Navy and Marine Corps Team is with me. We will investigate this accident fully and do all we can to prevent similar incidents in the future,” Adm. John Richardson, the Navy’s top officer, said in a Facebook post. The team is based at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida.
According to his official Blue Angels biography, Kuss joined the elite aerobatics team in 2014 and accumulated more than 1,400 flight hours. He was a native of Durango and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines in 2006. He had previously served in Afghanistan before joining the Blue Angels.
Kuss’ hometown newspaper, The Durango Herald, reported when Kuss was named to the Blue Angels team that he was a 2002 Durango High School graduate and 2006 graduate of Fort Lewis College, where he studied economics. The newspaper said he had been “enamored of jets since he was a toddler,” learned to fly in Durango and soloed in a Cessna 152 when he was 15.
“He still hadn’t gotten a driver’s license,” his mother, Janet Kuss, told the newspaper then. “His favorite toys were jets, and he wanted to be a Blue Angel since forever.”
In a video the U.S. Navy posted to its YouTube channel, Kuss stood…
Read more at Navy
from DefenseNewz.com http://ift.tt/1PbddNY
via Defense News
No comments: