wing snaps off plane, whole-plane parachute deploys safely

**PJs** · Sep 30, 2018, 01:12 PM

Originally Posted by melbakid

My father was stationed at Hamilton AFB, CA at the time of that crash. He had called the house to let the kids know the T-Birds were going to be out practicing. We lived in the old "500" area housing on the base and had climbed up the hill with a tower to watch the flying. The jets where flying north towards Novato on the east side of Hwy 101. One of the jets started losing power and altitude. There were bunkers at the north end of the base that looked like hills the jet went toward it and then behind it and crashed and all you could see was a big ball of fire and smoke. A few seconds latter you could hear the explosion, really rattle the base! Like you said it brought tears to my eyes also. I believe I was 11 or 12 at the time.

Thanks for the comment melbakid! Who would have thought in the middle of the internet, on this forum, finding another soul that witnessed the same tragedy. It couldn't have been more than a few hundred of us and fewer kids. Dad and I were up on the hill behind the houses on Patterson Ln...the steep one off Bolling. I remember the bunkers and a radar shack at that end, but mostly that second of fear/panic as we saw he wasn't pulling up after One had pulled up and then all hell broke loose and the explosion and the huge billowing smoke cloud...then that heart sink that make you weak at the knees. It all happened so fast and slow at the same time. I had put it out of my mind a few months later when Dad got orders for Nam. Actually didn't think of it very often until Dads passing in 07' when I was doing his memorial video and it hit me like a brick, and ended up writing a letter to them. They did a missing man for him at the Mather show after his memorial and got to meet all of them again and signed my hat.

Dad really disliked the 105's Lead Sled as he called it, some called it Thud, after that and what he witnessed with them in Nam. They had some real issues and a lot of good pilots (some Dads friends) lost over there. The 100's they started with weren't much better but after that they went to the new 100D's until the F4's.

Found a couple of write up this morning before answering. One is by Capt. Devlin's son and has some interesting pictures I don't remember seeing before. Another was a Check-Six with some detail. And a Tribute article on Warbird News about Rick Dale "Rick's Restorations" restoring it from T-Bird Alumni funds.

In all this it's nice to run across someone else that was there, and a bit of catharsis, but as I stated 3 is enough for me and hopefully new tech will save a few more of these Precisionist's. You can watch all the video of this stuff you want, but it never has the impact of seeing the real event real time.

PJ