It was pilot error, I thought you were complaining about the sand storm that some of the pilots had complained about as justification.
Of course there is dust with helicopters landing and taking off in desert areas, it didn’t justify the bad piloting and crashing into the parked C-130.
I mean, come on, even a bus they should have and could have known was on that route was unexpected and had to be halted then held at gunpoint??
Any way you cut it there was just a lot more dust than he and others expected and they should have expected exactly those conditions. There is also a question of whether there were two people rather than one directing the traffic on the ground when one was supposed to be in charge with no one else directing aircraft.
I'll see if I can find the box with a book about it and if that's where such details are laid out. If so, I'll post the title and such but it'll be a while before I can clamber up into the attic.
Col. Beckwith was related to a good friend of mine also named Beckwith and I just remember him talking about how much dust there was just prior to the accident, more than he expected, and how he thought organization of the site was breaking down even prior to the crash. I also recall him saying he didn't know if it was another dust storm or something else like another aircraft winding up other than the ones he knew about. I think all of this was in his book, another one of the subject, or the Congressional report.