The flight-paths of the Frecce Tricolori aircraft Emergency response Scope The third aircraft disintegrated in the collision and parts of it were strewn along the runway.Īfter the crash, the remaining aircraft regrouped and landed at Sembach Air Base. The pilot of the aircraft that hit the helicopter ejected, but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened. He died 20 days later, on Saturday, 17 September 1988, at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from burns he suffered in the accident. The piercing aircraft crashed onto the runway and consequently both the fuselage and resulting fireball of aviation fuel tumbled into the spectator area, hitting the crowd and coming to rest against a refrigerated trailer being used to dispense ice cream to the various vendor booths in the area.Īt the same time, one of the damaged aircraft from the heart-forming group crashed into the emergency medical evacuation UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, injuring the helicopter's pilot, Captain Kim Strader. The mid-air collision took place as the two heart-forming groups passed each other and the heart-piercing aircraft hit them. ( August 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. The heart is then pierced by a lone aircraft, flying in the direction of spectators. In the completion of the lower tip of the heart, the two groups pass each other parallel to the runway.

In this formation, two groups of aircraft create a heart shape in front of the audience along the runway. Ten Aermacchi MB-339 PAN jets from the Italian Air Force display team, Frecce Tricolori, were performing their 'pierced heart' (Italian: Cardioide, German: Durchstoßenes Herz) formation. At the time it was the deadliest air show accident in history until a 2002 crash at the Sknyliv air show that killed 77. There were 70 fatalities (67 spectators and three pilots) and 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire, and hundreds more had minor injuries.

Three aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display, crashing to the ground in front of a crowd of about 300,000 people. The Ramstein air show disaster occurred on Sunday, 28 August 1988 during the Flugtag '88 airshow at USAF Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern, West Germany. The memorial set up to commemorate the victims

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