SANTA ANA, Calif. -- Edward Humes of the Orange County Register won the Pulitzer Prize for specialized reporting Thursday for a body of work that included a series demonstrating a link between the use of night goggles and a spate of helicopter crashes.
'The genesis of the series was hearing from pilots that they thought (the goggles) were more dangerous than they needed to be,' Humes said, and that hethen made inquiries about the devices using the Freedom of Information Act.
Humes said that since 1977, 69 helicopters were destroyed, with a loss of life of 150 servicemen, in crashes involving pilot use of goggles intended to improve night vision. About half of the crashes were in the past two years.
'Typically the military will say (a nighttime helicopter crash) occurred during routine nighttime training,' Humes said. 'Because these crashes happen in remote places, nobody looks into them.'
Humes, who covers military affairs for the Register, said he believes the Register was the first newspaper to report a problem involving the goggles.
The devices, he said, were initially designed for use by military truck drivers and infantrymen reading maps at night.
Since the publication of Humes's stories, the House Arms Services Investigations Subcommitte held a hearing March 22 taking testimony from pilots, with more hearings planned.
Humes, 31, has worked for the Register since April 1985. Previously he repoted for the Tucson Citizen.
Executive Editor N. Christian Anderson credited Humes for providing 'good strong coverage of the (military) beat, leading to tips that led to other good stories.'
He said the night goggles series in the body of work on which Humes was judged 'showed how night vision goggles are very poorly designed.'
He said the military has tended to blame the crashes on pilot error, refusing to blame the goggles.
The Register previously won a Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1985 for its coverage of the 1984 Olympics.
