Air Force Maj. Gen. Joe Brown and wife Sue Brown both died as a result of injuries sustained during a crash landing of their Cessna 210 in Williamsburg, Va., Friday.
Brown was the first pilot to penetrate Iraqi airspace when he successfully completed a B-1 bomber mission despite withering anti-aircraft fire.
On March 22, 2003, Brown, then a colonel, was tasked with flying his B-1 over classified locations in Iraq to destroy six Global Positioning System jamming towers, according to the citation.
For his bravery, Brown earned the Distinguished Flying Cross — one of the highest awards for valor in combat.
The reasons for the crash are still under investigation, but reporters at the Hampton Daily Press talked to a witness who said he saw the plane struggling in the air.
“I heard him pulling for power, trying to power up,” Herbert Gordon, a retired captain with the Williamsburg Fire Department, told the Hampton Daily Press. “The plane banked like it was coming into the airport, and it looked like the wind pushed it up. It’s wings were perpendicular to the ground.”
“All of a sudden, he just did a nose-dive,” Gordon added. “Then I heard a crash.”
Brown was the commandant of the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at National Defense University in Washington. He had logged over 4,300 flight hours and was considered an expert flight officer in the B-1 Lancer and B-52 Stratofortress.
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