The man killed during a F-18 fighter jet training exercise was a 25-year-old U.S. Marine Corps pilot, officials said Tuesday. First Lt. Brian R. Deforge of Plattsburgh, N.Y., died in Monday's mid-air collision, U.S. Navy spokeswoman Lt. Sonja Hanson said. Deforge and another pilot, whose name has not been released, were practicing dogfighting maneuvers when they crashed over Fort Hunter Liggett, a remote U.S. Army Reserve base 150 miles south of San Francisco, said Navy spokesman Dennis McGrath.
Deforge, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, chose to go into the Marines Corps as a pilot, Hanson said. Both Navy and Marine Corps pilots train at Lemoore Naval Air Station where the pilots were based.
The other pilot ejected and was hospitalized briefly Monday.Both men were members of the Strike Fighter Squadron 125, also known as the "Rough Raiders." Lemoore supplies all the fighter jets to Navy ships off the West Coast and serves as a training site for F18-Cs. Dozens of fighters rotate to and from aircraft carriers every month.
The F18-C is a McDonnell-Douglas single-seat fighter jet that can reach a maximum speed of 1,190 mph. Several military units use the airspace at Hunter Liggett for training. Air-to-air combat training attempts to simulate the close contact of actual fights without placing fighters too close to each other. The Lemoore base, which is 30 miles south of Fresno, is about 100 miles inland from where the crash took place.
Deforge is survived by a wife and two children. No further details were available and attempts to reach family members were unsuccessful.
1. If you are looking to make a donation by check, you can send a check made out to either Brian Deforge Jr. or Alison Deforge and send it to:
The Brian Deforge Memorial Foundation
c/o The Romano Family
527 S. East Ave.
Baltimore, MD 21224
As long as the checks are made out to one of the kids, Jane can deposit them into the custodial account we have for the kids' benefit. Don't worry about one kid getting more donations than the other; the money is all going to the same place and will benefit both Brian Jr. and Alison equally.
2. Another option is to set up a monthly/quarterly/yearly allotment from mypay or a direct electronic transfer from a bank account (super easy with USAA b/c the Deforge's accounts are with USAA). You can set them up at an interval and amount of your pleasing and donations can be a "gift that keeps on giving" throughout the years. There has been interest in this plan by a few people as it's easy not to miss a few dollars per month/quarter and over the course of multiple years, a few dollars per month/quarter ends up being a sizable chunk of probably far more than the amount of a one time donation and far less„mchange painful on the bank account as the bank account will not be missing a large chunk of change all at once. If you have free time, feel free to break out your graphing calculator and do the math of what 10 people contributing 10 dollars per month over the course of 18 years ends up being. Then factor in 8 10 percent tax free compound interest for 18 years on that same sum of money. It is a large number, a number that will probably be able to fund a serious part of the children's college tuition.
If you're interested in this type of donation, us know and we will provide the bank account information to you so that you can set up your own deposits on a schedule/amount of your choosing.
Thank you all on behalf of Jane, Brian Jr., and Alison for your tremendous support of them during this difficult time. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact one of us at the bottom of this email or shoot an email to remember.rhino@gmail.com.
