The Navy aviator who flew more hours in an F-14 Tomcat than anyone else — most of them out of Naval Air Station Oceana — died Saturday when his private plane crashed at an Idaho airport.
Dale “Snort” Snodgrass, 72, was killed when his SIAI-Marchetti plane crashed into a field and caught fire shortly after taking off from the Lewiston-Nez Perce County Airport.
Snodgrass, who retired in 1999, was a pilot with a Florida-based air show operation, and taught aerobatics and formation flying in St. Augustine.
His active-duty career included serving as the commanding officer of the Oceana-based VF-33 squadron and also as commander, Fighter Wing, U.S. Atlantic Fleet.
He led 34 missions during Desert Storm.
Snodgrass was picked for F-14 training right out of flight school, and before he had qualified to land and take off from a carrier. He was the first pilot without any carrier experience to qualify to operate an F-14 from carrier and during his carrier landed more than 1,200 times on carriers.
“I had the pleasure of knowing him and even flying with him in an F-14 with a new flight control system with me in the backseat, which felt oddly appropriate,” NASA astronaut Scott Kelly wrote in a Twitter post.
Snodgrass, call sign “Snort,” flew the famous “banana pass” in 1988 — a wings-vertical pass close to the carrier USS America, as part of a show for families visiting the ship.
A 1978 graduate of the Navy’s “Top Gun” Fighter Weapons School, he was the Navy’s Fighter Pilot of the Year in 1985 and a regular participant in Oceana’s air shows.
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