Off Course and Under Fire

The violence and volatility of Central America, described with bloodless urgency in the Kissinger report, were brought home in a more poignant way last week in the isthmus. A U.S. Army observation helicopter was forced down under mysterious circumstances in Honduran territory. The pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Jeffery C. Schwab, 27, of Joliet, Ill., was killed by Sandinistas firing from 100 yds. away across the Nicaraguan border. He was the first U.S. serviceman to die in combat in Honduras since the U.S. began greatly expanding its military presence in that country a year ago (three have died in accidents), and only the second to die under fire in Central America during the Reagan Administration.

According to the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa, Schwab and two U.S. Army engineers were on a routine 170-mile flight from San Lorenzo to Aguacate. Schwab was unable to maintain his course 25 miles inside Honduras' southern border with Nicaragua, possibly because of 30-knot winds, the embassy said. As a result, the pilot was forced to land on a rutted dirt road near the frontier. When Schwab and his passengers got out of the aircraft, they came under intense fire from Sandinista troops. The two engineers escaped unhurt.

But the wind was actually blowing at ten to 15 knots that day, and visibility was good. Moreover, TIME has learned, the helicopter's mission was something more than routine. Schwab and his passengers were among 250 men from the U.S. 46th Engineering Battalion assigned to enlarge a contra airbase at Aguacate, the secret site of a new 10,000-ft. landing strip that will be capable of serving as a staging area for contra air raids into Nicaragua.

On the scene, Honduran soldiers of the 6th Centaur battalion told TIME Mexico City Bureau Chief David DeVoss that Schwab's copter had strayed out of Honduran airspace. "It came straight at us from inside Nicaragua," said Juan Carlos Torres, 20. "The Sandinistas were shooting at the helicopter, and it was being hit. It was in trouble and just made it across to Honduras." Another witness, Santo Andre Valledares, 24, recalled: "When the gringos arrived, they fell out of the chopper and one looked to be dead. The Sandinistas kept up their fire for a full five minutes after the crash."

President Reagan called Schwab's death "a great tragedy." Said Secretary of State George Shultz: "It is unacceptable for one country to fire into another at people and end up killing someone." Still, Shultz declared that the U.S. had no "plan or instinct" to retaliate militarily. Explained a White House aide: "No one wants to convert this incident into a Tonkin Gulf affair."

In Managua, a Sandinista Foreign Ministry communique declared that Nicaraguan troops had fired on an "intruding" helicopter but said nothing about shooting Schwab on Honduran soil. Nonetheless, the Nicaraguans announced they would conduct a full investigation. "The government deplores this incident and expresses its condolences to the pilot's family," said the official communique. It also expressed the hope "that this casualty will not be used as a pretext to aggravate the already critical situation in Central America." On that point, at least, Managua and Washington appeared to be in agreement.