Flypast to honour US airmen.

@wolfgang59 said
I never count the one from VeryRusty!

😆

@drewnogal

Something like that happened where I used to live, Glendora California when I was 14 years old.
I was playing in the street and saw this jet flying very low streaming smoke and I saw the pilot trying to force the hatch open which was stuck. He then aimed the plane in the middle of a street where it hit and dug a hole ten feet deep. In the house just to the right of the crash there was a birthday party for some kid going on and a lot of kids were there, and some of the engine parts hit the ground very near the kids including one piece of a tail crashing into a tree very close to the road where some kids were playing in that tree. That piece buried itself into the tree and missed the kids.
I was there within a minute, it was only a couple blocks away and I saw a piece of the pilots helmet with brain tissue inside. I was aghast, totally shocked.
That image stays with me to this day. Nobody was injured thanks to the last thing the pilot did, direct a failing jet away from houses. He was a hero.

@sonhouse

That must have been very traumatic for you and at such a young age.

@sonhouse said
@drewnogal

Something like that happened where I used to live, Glendora California when I was 14 years old.

What year was that?

@wolfgang59

1955, I was freshman in HS.

@sonhouse said
@wolfgang59

1955, I was freshman in HS.

MIB seem to have covered it up.

@wolfgang59 said
I never count the one from VeryRusty!

No thumbsdown from me.

@torunn said
No thumbsdown from me.

What’s the record for thumbs down on a post?

@drewnogal said
What’s the record for thumbs down on a post?

I once had many thumbs down and I remember saying that at least it shows that people care... 🙂

@drewnogal said
What’s the record for thumbs down on a post?

Ask whodey!

@torunn said
I once had many thumbs down and I remember saying that at least it shows that people care... 🙂

What, on earth, did you say? That surprises me. 😲 🤔

@great-big-stees said
What, on earth, did you say? That surprises me. 😲 🤔

Indeed, Stees but they might have done it for fun, I'm usually not that controversial. 🙂

@torunn said
Indeed, Stees but they might have done it for fun, I'm usually not that controversial. 🙂

True enough. 🙂

@wolfgang59
What is MIB? The jet I saw crash was a F-86 if I am not mistaken,
It was only in view for a few seconds so I may be wrong but it sure as hell crashed and not far from my home, he was maybe 100 feet up max ATT, banging on his canopy which refused to open, smoke streaming out. Never knew his name either.

I'll make a guess as to what MIB is: "Military Investigation Board'? Something like that?

It may have been 1955 but no earlier.

I found it. July 8 1956, it was an F86 but not in Glendora, but San Dimas where we lived for a while. I was witness to that crash and the description matches exactly what I saw.

"8 July
The pilot of a North American F-86F Sabre out of Norton AFB, California, is killed when he crashes in San Dimas, California, on Sunday afternoon, on W. Allen Street, digging a hole six feet deep and 30 feet wide. The aircraft, which one witness said came across San Dimas in a southeasterly direction, passed over a park and narrowly missed a group of 200 Little League players picnicking there before striking power and telephone lines and exploding in the street where it ruptured a gas main and set fire to trees in the yard of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold Bayer. Several grass fires were extinguished as well. Air Force officials withheld the pilot's identity pending notification of the next of kin. His body was not immediately recovered.[211] The Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, reported on 10 July that the pilot was identified as Lt. Oliver L. Dillingham, 23, from Williams AFB, Arizona. He entered the Air Force in 1950 and saw service in Korea in 1954. The story also adds that the explosion after the crash set a house alight and slightly burned two girls.[212]"

I didn't know the kids were little league but I did see there were a lot of kids in the house a bit set inside, away from the road by about 100 feet but there were kids in a tree right next to the crash, which must have been terribly traumatic.
They didn't find the body because there was no body to find, I found bits of his brain inside bits of his helmet but there was nothing else to recover.
It was traumatic for all concerned.

Reading just two years of that list I saw a lot of my own plane crashes, the B47 which was my plane when I was in the AF and I was one of 6000 airmen saluting the last B47 to leave the runway and go to the boneyard.
There was one in Nebraska at my AFB, Lincoln AFB, no longer an AFB, but ATT one of my planes attempted to take off but didn't get high enough, it clipped a small tree on a small rise, maybe 20 feet high mound with a small tree on it and that caused the takeoff to fail, it swerved about violently and hit a farmers field and nobody survived that one either.
I was one of the poor dudes who had to go into that field and extract secret gear that may have survived. All I saw was a bloated totally blackened by flame rabbit in one of the furrows. THAT was a traumatic day also. And it was a plane I had just worked on the day before. My gear didn't fail, there was engine failure and the B47 was noted for difficulty taking off, on a hot day it would never get off the ground even if you had a 50 MILE long runway, instead, had to rely on a dozen or so rocket assist jobs strapped to the outside.

There was a massive engine failure during takeoff and a lot of engine parts were found on the runway proper from that plane. It was a somber day for sure.