The 10 men who flew the two Arizona-based planes fired on over Mauritania were a close-knit group dedicated to ridding western Africa of locusts, their families said. One of the planes was shot down Thursday and officials said all five people aboard were killed. A second DC-7 was damaged in the anti-aircraft missile attack but was able to land at a remote airstrip in Morocco. No injuries were reported among those aboard. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack. A co-owner of the downed DC-7 identified those who were killed as: Joel Blackmer, 46; his son, Frank Kennedy, 21, of Phoenix; Bernard Rossini, 49, of Tempe, Ariz.; Frank Hederman, 47, of Cody, Wyo.; and Wes Wilson, of Hershey, Neb. Sergio Tomassoni, 64, a co-owner of T & G Aviation in Chandler, Ariz., said in a telephone interview from Agadir, Morocco, that he was aboard the other T & G Aviation DC-7. ``We were just flying along at about 11,000 feet when, all of a sudden, the first airplane was hit,'' Tomassoni said. ``We saw the smoke and a big ball of fire. One of the engines was in flames. The plane started losing altitude, and then the right wing blew off. I knew they were in trouble, but we had problems of our own.'' The planes were under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development to spray locust swarms in Senegal, he said. They were fired on near where Marxist rebels have been fighting Morocco for an independent Western Sahara. ``All my dad wanted to do was take some of his skills to help other people,'' said Kara Rossini, 22, of St. Paul, Rossini's daughter. ``He was the kind of guy who would look at the little Ethiopian kids with the big bellies and cry. He ends up getting shot by a bunch of creeps who probably are going to get some of the food from this effort,'' she said. The 10 men who made up the crews were friends who loved to spend time talking shop about airplanes and aviation, Tomassoni said. Tomassoni's wife, Lydia, of Chandler, said her husband survived another tragedy in 1986 on another pesticide-spraying mission in Senegal. His plane, another DC-7, developed engine trouble and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean, she said. Three others died, but Tomassoni survived. ``Nothing bothers those idiots,'' Mrs. Tomassoni said. ``They're all ex-servicemen. That's their life.''
