Former Military Engineer Cleared in Fatal 2017 Plane Crash Case

A federal jury in Mississippi has cleared a retired military engineer of charges related to lying about a deadly 2017 military aircraft crash. James Michael Fisher was accused of making false statements during the investigation of the KC-130T crash that killed 16 service members.

GREENVILLE, Miss. — A federal jury has cleared a retired military engineer of criminal charges connected to a devastating 2017 aircraft accident that claimed the lives of 16 service members in Mississippi.

James Michael Fisher was declared not guilty on Thursday following an eight-day federal trial in Greenville, Mississippi. The charges against him included making false statements and obstructing justice during the criminal probe into the military aircraft disaster.

Fisher previously worked as the chief propulsion engineer at Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex in Georgia back in 2011. According to military investigators, civilian maintenance workers at that time missed critical defects in a damaged and deteriorated propeller blade that was later mounted on a KC-130T transport aircraft. The faulty propeller blade eventually failed during flight on July 10, 2017, as the New York-stationed aircraft traveled from Cherry Point, North Carolina to El Centro, California.

The propeller failure proved catastrophic when the broken blade struck the aircraft’s fuselage, creating a devastating impact that tore the plane apart mid-flight and sent debris crashing into Mississippi soybean fields near Itta Bena. The accident killed 15 Marines and one Navy corpsman.

Federal prosecutors brought an indictment against the already-retired Fisher in 2024. The charges claimed Fisher provided false information to federal agents regarding modifications to inspection protocols during a 2021 investigation, implying he participated in a conspiracy to place responsibility on maintenance workers.

However, Fisher’s attorney Steve Farese argued that another individual authorized technicians to modify propeller inspection methods while Fisher was traveling in Brazil. Therefore, Farese contended, Fisher was truthful when he informed investigators that no documentation approving maintenance modifications had been authorized in 2011. The defense also maintained that work on the problematic propeller occurred several days prior to the form’s approval, meaning the authorization document had no connection to the crash.

“Nobody did it intentionally,” Farese told The Associated Press in a phone interview Monday. “As one witness said, there were 10 different ways for that blade to have through inspection and be missed or put back in the system accidentally. There were 10 different ways it could have happened. So there was no clarity in the trial as to exactly what did happen.”

Prosecutors had not responded to requests for comment by Monday. The indictment claimed that engineers at the Georgia facility had authorized approximately 30 modifications to propeller inspection procedures between 2008 and 2017, despite Fisher’s earlier failure to provide documentation. Investigators reportedly concluded “they could no longer trust Fisher.”

The aircraft operated from Stewart Air National Guard Base in Newburgh, New York, and was transporting Marine special operations personnel from North Carolina to Arizona for training exercises. This incident marked the Marine Corps’ most devastating aviation accident since 2005, when a transport helicopter crashed in an Iraq sandstorm, resulting in 30 Marine and one sailor fatalities.

In the 2017 disaster, six Marines and the sailor belonged to an elite Marine Raider battalion stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and were en route to pre-deployment preparation in Yuma, Arizona, according to Marine Corps officials. The other nine Marines had been stationed in New York.

Wreckage scattered across two to three miles of agricultural land near the Mississippi Delta community of Itta Bena, approximately 85 miles north of Jackson, the state capital. Family members returned to the location one year later to unveil a memorial honoring Yanky 72, the aircraft’s radio call sign.

Following the accident, the Marine Corps, Navy and Air Force temporarily suspended operations of some or all C-130 aircraft, conducting thorough inspections and propeller blade replacements.