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Almost Saw and Accident-Who has seen one

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Meatball incident ...

July 4th celebration at Fort Benning, GA watching the Ranger Demo Team ... the 5th guy out of the UH-1 got a streamer, dropped his main, pulled his reserve and it promptly rolled up around him. You could see him clearly silhouetted against the sky as he frantically tried to untangle the chute. He stopped fighting and went spread-eagle for the resistance and augured into the trees about 50 feet from the stands.

AIRBORNE!!!!!!!!!

Minh
 
I've had the unfortunate privalage of witnessing a few accidents, a couple fatal. The first one I remember was seeing Tom Jones spin his Sukoui into the ground at OK City airshow several years ago...What a tragedy that was. Then I witnessed a VMC roll of a twin commander while trying to circle to land after an engine falure.... two dead. I've seen two different students cartwheel 172's on thier first solo's in gusty conditions... nonfatal, and they weren't mine. I also witnessed a heavily loaded Grumman Tiger go into the tree's after trying to takeoff from a short grass strip leaving four dead.

All tragic but good examples of learning from the mistakes of others as you won't live long enough to repeat them all yourself.
 
Saw an unlimited racer come apart in Reno a few years back. I believe they finally decided it was either rudder or elevator flutter. Either way, there was nothing but pieces flying through the air in the blink of an eye. Like Avbug said, it was enough for me - very surreal and sobering. The announcers and others at the race were hopeful about the outcome of the pilot for a while, but it was obvious to me you don't get away with smacking the ground at 450-mph.

I was at IAH few years back and saw a KLM 747 have a pretty good engine strike. Lots of flames & smoke, but no one hurt. I've heard it's not hard to do in a 747, but I'm sure it didn't help his career.
 
Avbug - remind me never to get into an airplane if you're anywhere in the line of sight...
 
Over the years like Avbug I have seen my share. I saw two that were spectacular in that there was a lot of boom and I was the first one to the airplane. I shot the approach at DPA years ago when they had the short 4000 foot east west runway. I went right down to minima but got in and taxied to the hangar. I got out of the airplane and walked to the end of the hangar so I could see how a Baron did that was following me on the approach. I heard the engines start to come up for the miss then they went back to idle with several large backfire's. To my total surprise out of the fog came the Baron, he flared and hit hard, upon impact the aircraft blew up, the fireball was so big that the fog dissipated then came back. I started running to the aircraft full blast, I was 30 feet from it when from behind the flames the pilot came walking out as calm as could be. I asked him if anyone else was in the aircraft and he said," no". I got the guy a safe distance from the aircraft just as the second fuel tank went. By the time the fire truck got there the Baron was just a pile of rubble, only the tail was left.
Another time I was loading freight in my Lear in FNT. This time I heard a hugh bang and some scrapping, I looked up to see a PA-31T going by on its belly, on fire. It stopped just 100 yards from where I was standing. I jumped the fence and ran right to the aircraft. Both engines were screaming and the pilot was just sitting at the controls doing nothing. I ran inside the aircraft pulled the conditioner levers to cutoff, shut off the battery and dragged the pilot out. Just after I got the pilot out rescue covered the aircraft with foam. I went back to the Lear jumped in it and flew my trip...all in a days work.
 
%&$$#^

I saw a WWII plane taxi into a parked military car at an airshow. I was also at an accident scene a couple of minutes after a C172 lost an engine on takeoff and stall/spinned it into the remaining runway (3 dead). In my 3 years of driving jumpers, I have only seen a sprained ankle (thank god). I don't think I could fly jumpers again if I saw one of them die.
 
I was at Oshkosh back in '98 when a Corsair tried to take off behind a Bearcat that hadn't started it's roll yet. The Corsair slammed into the Bearcat's wing ripping it off and forced the Corsair to cart-wheel down the runway. It immediately caught fire and had burst into flames. The heat that I felt almost 200 yards away was extremely intense. Everyone did survive, but the Corsair pilot was paralyzed. It surely was a terrible sight to see.
Fly Safe!
 
Here's a few for the thread,
We had just returned from the Grand Canyon and were heading home. The Capt. and I were sitting at a intersection waiting for the light to change. The weather was typical moonson July Phoenix weather, the wind was howling and kicking up dust. Just over our heads, a Skylane trying to land made the decision to go around. We both saw this and pulled to the side of the road at the end of the runway. The dust was so thick you could hardly see 100ft. Directly in front of us on the centerline climbing comes this Skylane on what seemed like another go around. Then about 650ft and 1/2 mile on the extended centerline, he started going down in a residental neighborhood. We drove towards the area not knowing what to find. The pilot landed belly up on a greenbelt between several homes both were as expected shook up.
The other I witnessed, at the same airport, while sitting in the airport managers office jaw jacking. The office is setup with this giant picture window to the managers back while sitting at his desk. Were talking about the grand opening of our new business, when I notice this medium size 4 engine prop aircraft on final. Then I see it take a very extreme nose down desend into the desert then a big cloud of dust from the impact, just as his handheld radio goes off with the tower telling him of the crash. We are one of the first out to the crash site. Crawling out of the aircraft is the pilot, with his shoulder length hair, shorts, sandels, hawaiian shirt and a flightbag with all kinds of colorful stickers and patches on it a Jimmy Buffet fan for sure. The guy was not hurt and very calm. We took a peek inside the aircraft which was not badly wreck and found some very dry fuel cells. He said " I was running on fumes Man, I almost made it. " He did manage to retrack the gear before impact which did save the aircraft. An FBO on field did manage fix everything and about 8mons later it left the airport. Apparently, this aircraft was on a ferry trip to Hawaii. About a year later I saw the same aircraft on the tramac at HNL International.
 
Hi!

I was in HS, at my very first airshow, with a 6 year-old girl on my shoulders. It was a local airshow at our little town with 1 stunt pilot. He was very experienced, but the weather wasn't great.

He was doing snap rolls while diving at the ground. He was getting low, and I said, if he does one more, he won't have room to pull out. He did one more.

He managed to rotate the aircraft to a flat attitude prior to impact which saved his life. The sound from the aircraft hitting the runway was very load. He had numerous back operations, and was in the hospital for 8 months or so. After his crash, they closed up and didn't serve breakfast anymore. The 6 year-old I was holding was very upset.

I also saw the Challenger explode live while watching the Disney Channel. My roomate (at Ft. Rucker, Army/AF helo flight school)kept asking me what happened, and I kept telling him it blew up.

During the Gulf War, we heard some other pilots over the frequency describe a Marine F-18 being shot down over Kuwait. We never did find out if that guy ejected and/or lived.

Cliff
 
On our way back from a WESTPAC deployment, we had a small airshow for our family that embarked in Hawaii. There was an F-14 doing a strafeing run at some smokes in the water and his gun mount/forward bearing siezed up. The result was that the gun kept fireing, but twisted inboard and upward, shooting out the radar. No one hurt, but got to see "battle damage" on the nose and radar.
 

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