A catastrophic propeller failure that ripped apart a Marine Corps KC-130T during a 2017 flight, killing 15 Marines and one sailor on board, was more than just a mechanical failure, federal prosecutors say. The deadly crash traces back, officials say, to faulty inspections half-a-decade earlier which an Air Force civilian engineer approved and then covered up.
Federal prosecutors charged James Michael Fisher, a former Air Force civilian engineer at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Georgia, this week with obstructing justice and making false statements to crash investigators. Fisher, prosecutors say, lied about and then tried to cover up his role in signing off on inspections that should have detected cracking in a propeller blade before it disintegrated mid-flight, dooming the flight known as Yanky 72, all 16 service members on board.
The federal investigation found that Fisher, who served as the C-130 lead propulsion system engineer at the complex from 2011 to 2022, had signed off on a waiver of a time-consuming inspection method and continued to recommend that technicians use a less reliable way to inspect propeller blades, according to an indictment against Fisher in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Mississippi.
Fisher, 67, is also accused of trying to thwart efforts by federal agents to learn about his decisions regarding propeller blade inspections.
The federal charges are the latest chapter in a series of escalating investigations around the crash. An initial military-led investigation found that as the plane’s propeller broke apart 20,000 feet over Mississippi, spinning pieces of the blades cut the fuselage in half, dooming all onboard. Military investigators — whose review focused on the physical cause of the crash — blamed technicians at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex, finding that technicians and supervisors there had been negligent in a series of inspections on the plane’s propellers six years earlier. But while the military’s findings established the cause of the crash, the question of criminal misconduct — whether the shoddy inspections and efforts to cover them up amounted to a crime — fell to the Department of Justice to decide.
Task & Purpose obtained through the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system, or PACER.
“Fisher attempted to obstruct the criminal investigation by intentionally withholding documents showing that he played a crucial role in removing the critical inspection procedure and providing false statements to federal agents in order to cover up his role in removing the critical inspection procedure,” the indictment says.
He also admitted to federal agents that the inspection that was not performed would have found the cracking in the faulty propeller blade that caused the KC-130T to crash, but he claimed others had approved using a different type of inspection for C-130 propeller blades, according to the indictment.
Fisher has been charged with making false statements and obstruction of justice, according to the Justice Department. He faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, if convicted.
When reached by Task & Purpose on Thursday, Fisher’s attorney declined to comment for this story.
A rushed 2011 inspection
Fifteen Marines and one sailor were killed when the KC-130T with the call sign “Yanky 72” crashed on July 10, 2017 in Mississippi. Seven of the Marines killed were with the 2nd Raider Battalion.
Subscribe to Task & Purpose today. Get the latest military news and culture in your inbox daily.
The crash was caused when a corroded propeller blade broke apart in flight. The blade, identified as PB24 Corroded Propeller Blade, had arrived at the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in August 2011 for an inspection and overhaul. It was later determined that the blade had corrosion and about three inches of cracking in an area at the base of the blade known as the taper bore, that was neither detected nor fixed at the complex, the indictment says.
The inspection and overhaul process lasted until Sept. 12, 2011 and the propeller blade went back into the Navy’s C-130 fleet, according to the indictment. It is unclear what tests were performed on the blade because all work documents were destroyed per Air Force policy.
The charges against Fisher stem from how his technicians looked for corrosion and cracking in taper bores.
One method for inspecting propeller blades known as “penetrant inspections” involved immersing or spraying the blades with a fluorescent dye–and then using a black light to see where the dye had seeped through cracks in the taper bore.
The other method is called an eddy current inspection: Maintenance technicians move an electromagnetic probe over the surface of the taper bore. The probe sends a signal to a monitor if it detects any cracks or corrosion.
Of the two methods, using the fluorescent dye took the most time. Prior to Aug. 22, 2011, maintenance technicians were required to perform the penetrant inspections on all Air Force and navy C-130 propeller blade taper bores. They were also required to conduct eddy current inspections as a backup test if the penetrant inspections found cracks or corrosion.
But the technicians knew that there were problems with the eddy current inspections, according to the indictment.
“Robins only had one set of eddy current testing probes for the Navy and Air Force, even though the Tech Manuals had different probe requirements,” the indictment says. “Before August 22, 2011, maintenance technicians had repeatedly reported to their supervisors and other engineers at Robins that the eddy current probes being used were unreliable.”
Unreliable inspections
Despite these shortcomings, a maintenance technician supervisor sent Fisher an email on Aug. 19, 2011 asking permission to stop conducting the penetrant inspections because they were “very time consuming,” the indictment says.
Fisher quickly wrote back, “I have no problem with removing the requirement for dye penetrant,” and added his rationale for approving the request.
On Aug. 22, 2011, another maintenance technician supervisor submitted a request known as a “Blanket Form 202” requesting permission to stop conducting the penetrant inspections. Such forms were required for any chances in how the Navy and Air Force technical manuals called for inspecting propeller blades. The Blanket Form 202 was approved that day.
“The request contained the notation ‘ATTN: MIKE FISHER’ and contained the same language from Fisher’s email, stating the rationale for removing the request was ‘PER MIKE FISHER C-130 PROPULSION SYSTEM ENGINEER,’” the indictment says.
Neither Fisher nor the engineers with the System Program Office, which oversees how C-130s are inspected and overhauled, consulted with the specialists known as Level 3 engineers, who were experts on the penetrant and eddy current inspections, according to the indictment.
“The Level 3 engineers had the training and the expertise to determine whether removing the penetrant inspections was advisable,” the indictment says.
As a result, maintenance technicians did not conduct any penetrant inspections at the complex between Aug. 11 2011 and Dec. 13, 2013. Fisher was the engineer assigned to three additional Blanket Form 202s during that time that recommended using solely eddy current inspections.
The supervising engineer tried to talk to Fisher between April and September 2012. That September.
In late 2011, a Level 3 supervising engineer ordered an evaluation to look into the effectiveness of eddy current inspections based on concerns from maintenance technicians, the indictment says. The report came out in February 2012 and found that the probes used for the eddy current inspections were not reliable. Fisher did not immediately respond to the report.
“Finally, in September 2012, Fisher responded to the supervising engineer ‘since we are already using penetrant I would be happy with just eliminating the use of probes …’ even though penetrant inspections were not being performed after August 22, 2011,” the indictment says.
In December 2013, the System Program Office engineers approved going back to penetrant inspections and stopping the use of eddy current inspections. The “unreliable” eddy current probes were taken out of service. Technicians at the complex did not perform any eddy current inspections on taper bores until after the Yanky 72 crash.
Escaping blame — at first
When military investigators looked into the crash, they were not provided with any of the Blanket Form 202s, according to the indictment. They were also led to believe that they could not speak with any of the technicians who performed the inspection on the faulty propeller blade that caused the crash, nor were they told about the technicians’ concerns about eddy current inspections or that an engineer had found in 2012 that the eddy current probes were unreliable.
They believed that the technicians who had inspected the blade had followed the Navy technical manual, which calls for penetrant inspections.
“In sum, the JAGMAN [Jude Advocate General Manual investigation] Report primarily blamed maintenance technicians for the crash, stating they were grossly negligent and primarily responsible for the mishap,” the indictment says. “Fisher and the System Program Office avoided scrutiny.”
But when federal agents launched an investigation in 2020 into whose gross negligence was responsible for the crash, maintenance technicians told investigators that “their supervisors in 2011 cared more about production than safety,” and they had disregarded technicians’ concerns about inadequate inspections, the indictment says. They also told federal agents that their supervisors used Blanket Form 202s to work around any problems they had identified, such as insufficient equipment.
Several technicians provided investigators with the Blanket 202 Forms about stopping penetrant inspections and other documents that showed technicians had raised concerns about the eddy current probes in 2011.
“The technicians believed that their supervisors’ focus on production and productivity — and the east with which Blanket Form 202s could be obtained — caused the corrosion of the P2B4 Corroded Propeller Blade to go undetected.”
Cover-up and denials
During the investigation, federal agents determined that Fisher “could not be trusted,” according to the indictment. He initially did not tell investigators about the Blanket Form 202 that ended penetrant inspections. He later falsely told federal agents that there were no Form 202s approved in 2011 and 2012 for Navy aircraft and only seven in 2013.
When federal agents met with Fisher in July 2021 to ask about the Form 202s they had found, he gave them the form from August 2011 about penetrant inspections.
“Fisher admitted to the agents that the August 22 Form 202 was a new revelation that changed the root cause conclusion as to why maintenance technicians missed the cracking of the propeller blade that caused the Yanky 72 crash,” the indictment says. “Fisher, whose name was on the Form 202, denied knowing about its existence and denied approving it. Specifically, Fisher stated that he would not have approved removal of penetrant inspections because deviating from penetrant inspections would result in corrosion going undetected.”
“He stated that a penetrant inspection would have detected the corrosion and pitting in the taper bore that led to the intergranular crack that caused the PB24 corroded propeller grade to fail,” according to the indictment. “Fisher stated that he could not understand why his System Program Office colleagues would approve such a Form 202. Fisher further claimed that he never would have approved the August 22 Form 202 because in 2011 there were problems with the reliability of eddy current probes.”
Federal agents later found Fisher’s email saying he had no problem with ending the penetrant inspections, the indictment says. Fisher also falsely told investigators that the waiver for penetrant inspections had expired in February 2012. Ultimately, the federal agents determined that Fisher was “the primary decisionmaker in resuming penetrant inspections in 2013,” more than a year after being told that eddy current inspection probes were unreliable.
When talking to investigators in December 2021, Fisher again denied that he knew about any of the Blanket Form 202s before that July. He denied approving the August 2011 Blanket 202 Form, he said he could not understand why his colleagues approved it, and he said the Level 3 technicians were not helpful at the time because they didn’t respond to his request for assistance.
“Federal agents finally confronted Fisher with his August 19, 2011 email,” the indictment says. “Fisher denied remembering the email and stated that, regardless, his colleagues should not have approved the Blanket Form 202 without doing their own research. The next day, on or about December 3, 2021, Fisher sent federal agents a follow-up email. In that email, Fisher again placed blame on the System Program Office engineers who approved the August 22 Form 202.”
UPDATE: 07/11/2024; this story was updated after James Michael Fisher declined to comment.
The latest on Task & Purpose
- This 41-year-old soldier graduated Army basic training after a 20 year break
- The woman who predicted the Tết Offensive, but was ignored, passes away at 97
- National Guard soldiers training with ‘pocket-sized’ drones
- Army vet receives Bronze Star with valor 20 years later for bravery in Iraq ambush
- 2 Civil War soldiers receive Medal of Honor for ‘Great Locomotive Chase’