A HERO'S FAREWELL
NEWS COPY - WITH PICTURES - By Joanne Webb
A US jet pilot who died in a crash did not report problems with his aircraft over fears it would delay his colleagues, an investigation has found.
Major Taj Sareen died when his FA-18 Hornet jet came down in Cambridgeshire on October 21, 2015.
A part-time photographer unknowingly captured the last heart wrenching photo of the pilot waving and smiling during take off - the day before he died.
An accident investigation report has now revealed there was evidence his navigation system was "not 100%".
The 34-year-old told colleagues about the issues but did not tell the maintenance team, the report said.
The fighter plane, flown solo by Maj Sareen, crashed at Temple Farm in Redmere, Cambs., shortly after taking off from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk.
In the report, the author said a combination of "stress from wanting to get home" and "stress of not wanting to be the reason for an additional delay" led him to keep the issue from engineers.
Maj Sareen, from California, US, was returning home from a six-month tour fighting so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria when the accident happened.
The F/A-18 Hornet was based with the Marine Attack Fighter Squadron 232 stationed in California - known as the Red Devils.
The report said: "The better decision would have been to debrief Maintenance Control about the problem and let them troubleshoot the aircraft."
At RAF Lakenheath Maj Sareen was asked whether he had any issues with his jet.
He responded, the report states, by saying: "The inertial navigation system, but it is good."
When the maintenance controller tried to find what exactly was wrong, Maj Sareen replied: "Don't worry about it, the jet is good."
The report also found the weather on the day Maj Sareen died had a "major impact" by forcing him to use his standby flight instruments.
"If the weather conditions had been clear," the report's author said, "I believe Maj Sareen would have been able to adequately deal with the system problems/failure modes of the INS (inertial navigation system) and would have been able to avoid impact into the ground."
A day before the crash part-time photographer Matthew Varley took a picture of Maj Sareen at RAF Lakeheath in Suffolk.
He said it was "heart wrenching" to realise it was the last known image of the pilot.
Speaking at the time, the plumber said: "There were four aircraft on the day and he was the only pilot to take off his flight mask and actually wave which was quite poignant.
"When I later found out that it was possibly the last photo of him alive it became heart wrenching.
"He was smiling and looking happy and I think it's become a nice tribute to him."
The pilot was called a "hero" by farmer Peter Sizer who saw the crash and said he narrowly avoided two houses and crashed in farmland to avoid hurting anyone else.
ENDS