WASHINGTON — Although two U.S. aircraft were shot down Wednesday, Saddam Hussein's air defenses overall have posed less threat than accidents have to U.S. and British air power during the first two weeks of the war against Iraq.
At least 17 allied aircraft have been lost in accidents, killing 24 servicemen and injuring several others. Two of the pilots have been captured by Iraqi forces.
Several defense analysts nevertheless characterized the accident numbers as impressively low.
"In the context of 20,000 sorties," the losses amount to less than 0.1%, said Daniel Goure, an authority on military affairs and vice president of the Lexington Institute, a think tank in the Washington area. "And there's not a pattern here. It's not like you're losing one particular type of aircraft."
In the most recent accident, a Navy F-14 Tomcat crashed in the Iraqi desert early Wednesday, apparently after an engine failure forced the two crew members to eject and then await rescue by a search helicopter.
On Tuesday, a Marine Corps AV-8B Harrier crashed into the Persian Gulf while attempting to land on the U.S. amphibious ship Nassau during a training mission, and a Navy S-3B Viking veered off the deck of the U.S. carrier Constellation shortly after landing.
The pilots ejected safely in both incidents.
Other than a Royal Air Force Tornado ground-attack jet that was mistakenly destroyed by an American Patriot missile March 23, those were the first airplanes involved in accidents. But an array of U.S. and British helicopters have crashed, some of them with fatalities.
On March 21, a Marine Corps CH-46E Sea Knight crashed while flying through heavy wind and a sandstorm in northern Kuwait, killing eight British Marines and four American Marines, the first fatalities of the war.
The next day, two Royal Navy Sea King helicopters collided over the Persian Gulf, killing the one American and six British crewmen on board.
Other helicopter accidents have destroyed AH-64 Apache Longbows, OH-58 Kiowas, a UH-1 Huey, an MH-53 Pave Low and a UH-60 Black Hawk, according to news reports.
In some instances, U.S. fighter planes have then swooped in to destroy the remains before they could be confiscated by enemy troops.
The crashes clearly serve as reminders of the hazards of military aviation, particularly when pilots must fly large numbers of missions under difficult conditions and in aging aircraft, some of which have poor safety records.
