Post by Clipper on Dec 8, 2019 14:58:56 GMT -5
I was just browsing on a FB page for Air Force firefighters when I came across the video.
Watch the video in it's entirety. It is a horrible tragedy caused by a pilot hot dogging with an aircraft much too large and unwieldy for such a maneuver. A B-52 actually requires much more altitude and many miles to make a gentle, banking turn in order to circle around.
The potential for this sort of tragedy is what made every in-flight emergency that we responded to when I was a firefighter/EMT at Griffiss an extremely stressful time while we waited for the aircraft experiencing the emergency to touch down. Thankfully I was never witness to such a horrible crash. When the KC135 tanker burned on the parking ramp I was on the first crash truck to arrive on scene and pulled a handline from the front of the truck and proceeded to attempt to cut a path for rescue along with my crew chief and another firefighter. We were wading in burning jet fuel that was spreading from the aircraft as fuel cells exploded. When the truck ran out of foam and water we were forced to follow the hose line back to the truck, hand over hand through thick black smoke and fire so hot that the soles of our boots were melting. Thankfully the maintenance crew that was running up a green engine when it exploded was able to escape over the opposite wing from where we were approaching, and there was no loss of life or injury. It was by far the scariest experience of my entire lifetime.
Over the 12 yrs that I was a firefighter I responded to several crashes. All F-106 fighter interceptors that crashed off base, and in all cases the pilot managed to eject safely and survived. One went down in the middle of the night near the Point Rock Fish and Game Club near Taberg. We responded and were guided to the pilot's location, hanging by his parachute lines in the top of a tree about 30 feet above the ground. We carried a 40 foot ladder through a boot sucking swamp up to our knees. He hollered down to us that he was glad we got there when we did. He had just finished a cigarette and dropped the butt and that he was in no position to be starting a forest fire, haha. The next day we went back and found that we could have driven another couple hundred yards up Cole Hill Road and would have been able to drive the rescue truck through a hayfield to within 100 feet of the pilot, all on hard and dry ground.
I was driving a crash truck the day that the F106 crashed near the Toll Gate bar on Rt 12 North of Remsen. Once again the pilot had ejected safely and the aircraft missed any dwellings or structures. I also drove a crash truck all the way to Big Moose Station when an F106 dropped off the radar. It turned out that it had crashed far from there on the tank range at Fort Drum.
Whenever we responded to stand by while an aircraft with a mechanical problem landed we would feel that adrenaline rush and the stress that made a persons heart pound, until the aircraft was safely on the ground. When I rode the rescue truck, we were tasked to run under the running aircraft and place safety pins in the landing gear struts to prevent the gear from collapsing. That is part of the reason I wear hearing aids today.
I can't imagine the feelings of sadness and futility as those crash trucks stood by for what was supposed to be an uneventful flyover during and airshow, only to be eyewitness to such a tragedy. Thankfully the aircraft did not crash into the crowd or building and the only casualties were the flight crew.
I remember that crash. I was in Ohio TDY with the 485th and watched it on the news. A sad day for the Air Force family.
When you see that firetruck roaring up Genesee St with siren wailing, you can bet that those firefighters are pumping adrenaline and have no idea what they face. It may be a pot on the stove or it may be a fully involved house where victims may need to be rescued from the flames. They don't spend all their days drinking coffee and playing cards.
Thankfully when Griffiss was open the Utica Rome area was never witness to such a horrific large frame aircraft crash and fatal fire. A KC135 refueling tanker or B-52 bomber carries up to 80 or 90 thousand pounds of jet fuel. Should one have gone down in a populated area it would have resulted in a major mass casualty disaster. The only crash that resulted in a fatal injury to someone on the ground was when a fighter jet crashed into a house on the four corners in Walesville, killing a woman that was standing at her kitchen sink. That was in the early 50's.
