From the deadliest crash in airshow history to a relic from World War 2 that went down
in Florida, plus a horrifying helicopter accident from 1977!
Here are 10 examples of when airshows go wrong!
10: The Blue Angel Plane Crashes On a Saturday afternoon in 2007, a Navy Blue
Angel jet crashed into a neighborhood in the middle of an air show.
The air show took place in South Carolina, more than 100,000 people were watching.
The blue Angels were the main attraction.
The crash was so bad that the pilot died immediately upon impact.
A year after the disaster, it came out that the pilot caused the plane to crash because
he had failed to properly tense his abdominal muscles to counter the impact of gravitational
force during an exceptionally fast turn, causing him to become disoriented.
This is according to a report from NBC News.
The pilot’s name was Kevin Davis, and he was flying an F/A 18 Hornet in his first season
with the Navy elite aerial demonstration team.
He wasn't a brand-new pilot, but it was his first season with the team.
Lt. Cmdr.
Garrett D. Kasper, a spokesman for the Blue Angels, said the pilots were doing a maneuver
that involved six planes coming together from behind the crowd to form something called
a Delta triangle.
One plane did not rejoin the formation.
It was in Kevin’s final turn as he made to rendezvous with the other aircrafts that
he pulled a high-G turn, super aggressively, and he experienced six times the force of
normal gravity, which resulted in decreased blood flow to the brain.
In other words, Kevin became a bit overwhelmed and crashed the plane into neighboring houses.
At least eight people were injured on the ground, several homes were damaged, but nobody
else was killed other than the pilot.
9: The Worst Disaster in Airshow History On July 27, 2002, a catastrophic incident
occurred at the Sknyliv Air Show.
It is considered the worst and deadliest air show disaster in the history of air shows.
At least 543 people were injured, 10 people suffered permanent disability, and 77 lost
their lives.
It all started when about 10,000 people gathered to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Ukrainian
Air Force’s 14th Air Corps.
But celebration turned to horror when a Ukrainian Air Force Sukhoi Su-27 crashed in the middle
of an aerobatics presentation.
The aircraft started a rolling maneuver at a low altitude.
The aircraft was supposed to pull up before hitting the ground, but the left wing dropped
too far and the crew had no choice but to eject as they realized they were about to
smash into the airfield.
But the aircraft didn’t just plow into the ground, it skimmed across like a flat rock
over the surface of a pond.
The plane hit a stationary aircraft, ricocheted off a transport aircraft, then cartwheeled
straight into the crowd of spectators.
What followed was an absolute horror show.
Everyone was screaming, things were on fire, there was blood everywhere, and people were
running for their lives.
It was complete pandemonium.
In the end, the pilots were charged with lack of professionalism and negligence, but they
did not concede to being guilty and instead said that the show was poorly organized and
that their flight maps had been inaccurate.
8: The 1952 Farnborough Crash On September 6, 1952, a prototype jet fighter
crashed while trying to perform an aerial maneuver in Hampshire, England.
The prototype was such a massive failure that it literally disintegrated in mid-air, causing
the pilot and the flight test observer on board to both die.
Not only did the pilots die as their aircraft was ripped asunder, but the debris from the
craft rained down over the spectators, killing 29 people and injuring another 60.
It was horrific.
The jet fighter was a DH. 110, and the reason for the crash turned out to be complete structural
failure because of a design flaw.
It seems like a pretty risky thing to put a prototype fighter jet into an air show,
especially one that was found to have a design flaw in the wing..
After the incident, all DH. 110s had to be grounded.
The design flaw was eventually recognized and modified and the plane went on to serve
in the Royal Navy.
All it took to figure it out was a firestorm of death!
After the incident, air shows in the United Kingdom were tightened up quite a bit with
stricter safety procedures.
There wasn't another accident until an air show in 2015 when another aircraft crashed
and killed 11 people!
This one happened at the Shoreham Airshow when an ex-military craft crashed onto a main
road outside the airport.
7: Helicopter at the Airshow Aircrafts aren't the only things that cause
disasters at air shows.
While it's true that between the 1952 Farnborough Airshow and the 2015 Shoreham Airshow, there
were no spectators killed in England at an airshow, there was a helicopter incident in
1977.
The incident involved a plane colliding with a helicopter, killing five people on board.
The difference here is that luckily, no spectators were injured.
The accident happened when the helicopter, which was carrying sightseers, was smashed
into by a biplane of all things.
It wasn't even a military aircraft.
It was an archaic biplane!
The plane hit the helicopter, it broke into pieces and fell to the ground, while the biplane
made a rough crash landing.
According to the New York Times, the pilot and passenger on the plane were hospitalized
but made full recoveries, though the pilot, two young boys, a man and a woman were all
killed on the helicopter.
Even more tragic is that the parents of the two young boys were on the ground in the crowd
at the time when the collision happened.
Just imagine their horror as they watched the helicopter carrying their children explode
in a hailstorm of twisted metal.
The helicopter had been taking tourists for a ride around the airfield at the same time
the Biggin Hill AirShow was on.
The old biplane didn’t have a radio equipped, so it had no idea that the helicopter was
ascending straight into its flight path.
Have you ever been in a helicopter?
Will you ever go on one now after there have been so many disasters involving them?
Let me know in the comments below and if you’re liking this video be sure to hit the thumbs
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6: The Ice Cream Crash Back in 1972, in Sacramento, an airplane crashed
into an ice cream parlor near the end of the show that was happening at the Executive Airport.
The crash killed 22 people.
It became known as the tragedy at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor, and it went down when the
pilot of an F-86 Sabrejet aircraft tried to take off from the runway.
He messed up and overshot the runway, causing the vintage warplane to skip across Freeport
Boulevard and straight into the busy ice cream joint.
At the time, the ice cream shop was buzzing with customers.
There were about 100 people inside at the time of the crash.
And because this is an ice cream shop we're talking about, it was literally full of children.
Out of the 22 people who died, 12 of them were kids.
As the aircraft skidded out of the airport, its two external fuel tanks ruptured, turning
the airplane into a ball of fire.
It then hit a moving car, killing two people inside it, kept on going, and crashed into
the ice cream shop doing 150 mph.
One of the survivors of the incident, a boy who was only eight years old at the time,
lost nine of his family members in the incident, including both parents, two of his grandparents,
two brothers, one sister, and a pair of cousins.
5: Reno Race Crash In 2011, the deadliest air racing disaster
in United States history unfolded in Reno, Nevada.
James Leeward, 74 years old, was flying a P-51 Mustang from World War 2 when he somehow
got off course and did a nosedive into a crowd of spectators.
Nobody saw it coming.
The plane dived into the crowd, blew apart into fragments, and shrapnel dispersed through
the crowd, severing limbs and puncturing skulls.
It was a bloodbath, with 12 people dead and 69 injured.
During the race, James had been in 3rd place.
The racers were coming up on the finish line when James’ P-51 Mustang, nicknamed the
Galloping Ghost, pitched up, rolled, then nosedived and hit directly in front of the
grandstands at over 400 mph.
It hit the ground so hard that there wasn't even a fire, the aircraft simply disintegrated.
Nobody ever found out why the plane crashed.
The war plane had a history of successful air races going all the way back to 1946.
Even in the investigation afterward, the best thing anyone could come up with is that a
single locknut may have loosened and led to a crack and a flutter in the trim tab, which
caused James to lose control of the craft.
4: Landing in the Ocean In 2021, beachgoers enjoying a bit of fun
and sun at Satellite Beach got a lot more than they bargained for when a TBM Avenger
airplane came speeding towards them out of the sky!
It was manufactured during World War Two as a torpedo bomber and was taking part in a
wartime aircraft parade in Florida.
The plane suffered mechanical issues while flying in the Cocoa Beach Air Show.
According to the Orlando Weekly, the plane was forced to make an emergency landing at
the beach, which the people relaxing by the waves were definitely not expecting.
The plane did descend slowly enough for people to get out of its way.
However, there were some beachgoers exceptionally close to the fighter plane’s path who had
to scramble to safety.
In the end, the plane managed to touchdown on the water without running anyone over.
3: Wing Walker A plane crashed at an air show in Ohio and
burst into flames.
The crash involved a 450 HP Stearman and a stunt walker, horrifying hundreds of spectators
at the Vectren Air Show close to Dayton.
The most horrifying part about this crash is that there was a wing walker performing
stunts on the wing of the aircraft as it was flying.
And when it crashed, the performer had absolutely no chance.
The plane actually turned upside down so that the performer could sit on the underside of
the wing.
But when the plane tilted the wrong way and hit the ground, the wing walker was the first
to die.
The daredevil hit the ground, the wing was ripped off, the plane erupted in flames, and
all the spectators began to scream.
The crash may have happened because the vehicle didn't have enough air speed and it stalled.
The last thing the pilot did before dying was steer the airplane away from the crowd
of spectators, potentially saving hundreds of lives.
The only good news for the poor woman who had been on the plane's wing is that she probably
died instantly and painlessly, though she must certainly was scared out of her mind
in those last few seconds.
2: The Ramstein Air Disaster The notorious 1988 Ramstein Air Show disaster
happened when three Italian fighter jets collided in the air at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.
They crashed in front of thousands of shrieking spectators and plummeted into hordes of eager
viewers, killing 70 people and injuring 346.
The accident was the result of a few different things, but mainly a failure to properly pull
off a complicated maneuver known as the “pierced heart.”
The maneuver is when two groups of planes form a heart in front of the audience.
Then, a single jet flies straight through the heart.
It's almost like Cupid’s arrow piercing a heart made of airplanes!
But there was nothing romantic about this maneuver.
As you can imagine, there is no margin for error when performing such an incredibly complex
stunt.
But the aircraft meant to be the arrow piercing the heart came in too low and too quick, basically
smashing into the group of planes at 300 mph.
The plane disintegrated, the other planes were throttled out of control, and everything
came down in fireballs and blades of shrapnel into the crowd of thousands.
All three pilots involved in the incident were killed.
One managed to eject but then his chute malfunctioned and he plummeted to the ground like a skydiver
without a parachute.
Hot shrapnel and blazing petroleum fell on hundreds of spectators.
31 people died at the scene, 36 died from their injuries in the following days and weeks,
and nearly 500 people needed medical attention primarily for burns.
1: The Santa Ana The Santa Ana air show disaster was one of
the first serious accidents to ever happen at an aviation show.
In 1938 in the Santa Ana district of Bogota, in Colombia, a biplane with the Colombian
Air Force performed a stunt and then crashed into a grandstand and rolled into the crowd
of spectators.
The plane was called Curtiss Hawk II and pretty advanced for its day and age.
Keep in mind this was even before World War Two and planes were relatively new to the
world.
Nobody expected that such a powerful machine would malfunction and dive into innocent civilians.
Over 50 people were killed and over 100 were injured.
The pilot of the aircraft had been trying to fly between the presidential stand where
the Colombian president of the time and his successor, along with another future president
of the country, were watching, with the stand filled with diplomats.
But the pilot miscalculated the distance between the two stands, the wing struck the diplomatic
stand, the aircraft then ripped through the crowd and burst into flames.
Somehow, the presidential stand was totally okay.
It was only the civilians and a few soldiers who were gravely injured.
Thanks for watching!
Would you go to an airshow in this day and age?
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