Major Bryan Knight was finishing his act during the Chesapeake Air Show near Baltimore
in September of 1997 when suddenly his aircraft broke apart.
The skilled pilot quickly tried to point his F-117 Nighthawk fighter towards the water,
but there was nothing he could do to change the trajectory of the plummeting machine.
Footage taken that day shows that seconds before impacting the ground,
Knight ejected as almost 12,000 spectators witnessed the fighter crash behind the treetops
of the Bowleys Quarters residential area.
Hundreds of elements from the police, fire departments, and military units
then secured the area and evacuated the crowd and the surrounding houses.
After the shocking incident, further investigations would show
that the potentially fatal catastrophe was attributed to a simple paperwork mistake…
Inside the Cockpit
On September 14, 1997, Major Bryan Knight piloted an F-117 Nighthawk
number 81-793 at the Chesapeake Air Show near Baltimore.
The show had been going according to plan. First, Knight had done a straight and level pass
at an altitude of 500 feet at 400 knots. He then performed another straight and level
pass but slowed down to 300 knots to allow the audience to admire the Nighthawk in action.
And finally, for the third pass, Knight performed an arcing maneuver at 380 knots,
giving the audience quite the spectacle. The pilot recalled in a later interview:
(QUOTE) "It was a beautiful day to fly. I thought it was over and I'm on my way home."
But something went suddenly wrong. With no warning, the aircraft began to shudder violently
and veered sharply to the left. The resulting G-force pinned Knight’s head down and forward.
Knight recounted: (QUOTE) "The aircraft was rolling right.
The nose was pitching around. My impression was the aircraft wasn't moving forward."
The pilot could see land and water outside the cockpit and tried to
figure out where the people were located: (QUOTE) "That was my concern. I realized
there was a good chance the aircraft couldn't be flown out of this."
He then wrestled with the aircraft, trying to work the stick and throttle,
but the Nighthawk descended rapidly, and Knight struggled to turn to the water.
Merely 5 seconds before the F-117 irremediably crashed into the ground, the Major was able
to eject: (QUOTE) "That was probably the hardest decision I ever made in my life.
I dreaded having to pull those handles. I realized I had to get out right now or I may not survive."
As he safely glided in the air, Knight witnessed his aircraft crash into a residential area
and explode. Fortunately, as he described: (QUOTE) "I felt I was headed for the fireball.
As fate would have it, I got blown a little bit left of where the fire was."
From the Ground
The incident happened shortly past 3:00pm, and almost 12,000 people who had paid 10
to 12 dollars to watch the annual air show became witnesses to the disaster.
One of the attendees, John Wolff, stated: (QUOTE) "My first impression was, 'Hey,
they're pulling something on us - that plane isn't really going to crash.' Then it became
apparent it was the real thing. I never expected anything like that at all, and
here it's happening right in front of my eyes." Some witnesses recalled how the arrowhead-shaped
fighter turned its nose upward, and then the aircraft started falling apart.
According to reports, several pieces could be seen flying off the craft.
Glenn Dowell, who lived two doors from the crash site, recalled: (QUOTE)
"We were watching this stealth fighter go through its maneuvers. It did a dip
and started to head straight up. And then the wing fell off."
As footage of the incident shows, the left outboard elevon deflected multiple times. The
oscillations then tore the left wing, breaking it off 2.5 feet inboard of the elevon. Consequently,
the ruptured wing hit the F-117’s tail and crippled its vertical stabilizer. The fighter lost
control and rolled 90 degrees left in less than a second, pitching sharply to an attack angle.
Marty Campanella, a commercial pilot attending the air show, said: (QUOTE)
"The pilot stayed with it as long as he could, but you could see he didn't have control.
I would say the airplane came unglued."
Soon after, the Nighthawk’s main landing gear deployed, probably due to the high loads or
the loss of hydraulic pressure. The aircraft then tumbled and plummeted to the ground.
13-year-old John Stumpf and his brother Jared were just walking out of their home in Bowleys Quarters
in a driveway about 60 feet from the crash site when they came across the stunned pilot.
Knight approached the kids and humbly told them: (QUOTE) “I’m really sorry.”
Meanwhile, Andy Kunkowski, who was watching from a boat near the shore,
rushed to the scene of the crash and found Knight. Kunkowsi explained: (QUOTE)
"He said he was truly sorry about what had happened and said he tried to pull it out.
He wanted to land this thing in the water, but couldn't."
Knight was deemed a hero after the accident, and even Defense Secretary William Cohen commended
him, acknowledging his bravery for staying: (QUOTE) "with that aircraft until the very end."
Aftermath
The owners of the house hit by the fighter were not home at the time, and no one was
severely hurt. It took the firefighters about 45 minutes to extinguish the flames of two houses,
a car, a motorcoach, and a shed. The fire was put under control at 4:46pm,
and authorities declared the crash site a “National Defense Area.” An 8-foot-high
tarpaulin was erected around the site, and the debris was secured in a containment zone.
Around 150 firefighters, police, and military officials scoured the crash site that night.
Then, at 8:45pm, two busloads of soldiers arrived to guard the area,
and the place was lighted and cordoned off.
The residents of Bowleys Quarters had to be evacuated, and those who lived in the 800 block
of Chester Road were not allowed to return home, with the Red Cross providing shelter.
Photographers from The Sun and the Associated Press were detained for an hour,
and their footage was confiscated. One of them, Roberto Borea, stated: (QUOTE)
"Had I chosen not to surrender my equipment, I would have been taken into custody."
Later on, Captain Drew Sullins, spokesman for the Maryland National Guard,
apologized for the seizure and assured them that the material and equipment would be returned soon.
He also allowed photographers on the scene for a few minutes and under tight military supervision.
Investigation
The F-117 in question was part of the 7th Fighter Squadron, 49th Fighter Wing at Holloman Air Force
Base, New Mexico. At the time, it was temporarily located at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton,
Virginia, to support community and military air shows on the East Coast,
and had recently participated in other flyovers. Pentagon officials would not confirm that the
aircraft broke apart. However, they did not dispute the witnesses’ accounts.
A board of inquiry, including F-117 pilots and technical experts,
was then assembled to investigate the matter. Fred Trudel, a volunteer for the Yankee Air
Force Museum’s Northeast Division in New Jersey, described the crash: (QUOTE) "[The pilot] did his
standard fly-by routine and was beginning to do this pullout. He began to pull out
and got up to 1,200 feet and climbing when the right rear stabilizer broke from the airplane.
The airplane pitched up. This snapped the nose off the airplane, where the avionics are located.
Pieces kept falling off. We could see he was trying to point the airplane toward the water.”
He then concluded that: (QUOTE) “It was a structural failing of the airplane.
It was nothing the pilot did wrong, and there was nothing unusual about the flight."
Three months later, Aviation Week reported that: (QUOTE) “Four missing fasteners caused the crash,
and required inspection of those fasteners was missed six months earlier.”
Those maintenance records were incomplete, and inspection was not carried out due
to constraints in contracts and budget. The missing fasteners helped attach the elevon
to the wing structure, and their absence resulted in reduced stiffness, causing the flutter.
On January 26, 1998, a letter was published in Aviation Week that read: (QUOTE) “[The fasteners’]
absence was due to a mistake made almost two years ago. The successes of the F-117A are in
piloting and maintenance. Everyone in the program is making sure mistakes are not repeated."
Glenn Dowell sure spoke for a lot of neighbors when he said: (QUOTE)
"This is the end of air shows. They can have them somewhere else!”
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