Well today I witnessed my first aircraft crash.  It was a gorgeous blue Hawker Hunter Mk. 58 owned by Bob Guilford.

I had never seen a Hawker Hunter before and my very first thought about the aircraft on the takeoff roll was, "man, this airplane is gutless!"  It took up an incredible amount of runway, and it appeared that the pilot really had to yank her off the ground toward the end.  Once airborn  the wings really rocked back and forth as if she was very unstable and remained extremely low.

I really thought it was odd and tried to convince myself that it was the pilot just rocking the wings, lik e to wave.  But something still seemed wrong.


It went off into the distance for a few minutes, and then I watched it start to come back to the airport.  I noticed the airplane rolling back and forth quite rapidly and I immediately commented to my mom right next to me, saying, "holy cow, that plane looks about as stable as--"  I brought my camera up to look closer, noticing it descending.... then stopped mid-sentence saying, "Where's this guy going?!"  A second or two went by, and I saw it was continuing to get lower, raised my camera, shot my one pic of her partially obscured behind the trees, one completely behind the trees as I continued to pan, then saw some a ball of fire and smoke.   And it was utter silence!  I knew from the second I noticed that airplane oscilating back and forth that something was wrong.  I can't even explain what it was like seeing that airplane dissappear behind the trees. 

It was the 2nd to last aircraft to fly for the airshow (this one was only a static display and was heading home after it was going to do a fly-by) and they ended the show right there. 

Very sad, first time I've seen an airplane crash like this.  I've witnessed my fair share of engine failures on takeoff and nose-overs... but never anything where anyone died. 


And the kind of creepy thing is that when the aircraft arrived on Thursday(? or friday) right on takeoff her droge chute just tore right off the airplane!  The pilot instantly goes, "damn" over the radio.

As soon as I get home to a computer with DSL I'll post a couple pics for you all.  Some of the said aircraft and of the rest of the show. 

My prayers go out to this poor pilots family!

He didn't punch out.  I was there too.
my first thought after seeing the smoke and hearing the explosion was that it was another staged act, I couldn't believe that really happened.  I am just glad that no one in those houses it hit were hurt.  That was such a nice airplane too, beautifully restored.

here is the news story as presented by the local NBC affiliate KGW Channel 8: http://www.kgw.com/perl/common/video/wmPlayer.pl?title=www.kgw.com/071606_Witnes...

A little more info...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,,-5955752,00.html

Quote:

I could be mistaken about the airport but this is not the first incident that Boss has reported here recently.

PS. Here's one. http://www.simviation.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=genav;action=display;num=1...

its a shame he died..=(



R.I.P, the pilot must of knew he was having problems on board..one of my first thoughts would be to eject..

what I understand is that he was trying to avoid hitting those houses.  Also I don't think the ejection seat would have helped because I think the plane was probably too old for a Zero-Zero, didn't those come out in the seventies.

Quote:



Bizarre indeed... Why take off with an obviously underperforming aircraft?

As for seats, speed was the last "Zero" to make seats "zero - zero". Even now when seats aren't "Zero-zero" seats, its because they need forward speed, not altitude (such as a "zero-seventy" seat for example)

Quote:

Let's hope you never have to.

Quote:

Why worry about something that might never happen? Go & enjoy the show.