THIRTY YEARS AGO, I stood in the centre of a patch of ground that was burned black from the wreckage of three aircraft. I will never forget what happened.
The searing thoughts in my mind revolve around the eerie quiet wrapping the 300,000 in utter disbelief. I will forever hold a memory of a young German girl who was running away from our ice cream van holding her fresh scoop of chocolate outstretched from her burning clothes. Hundreds of others saw that poor girl running away from a catastrophic scene that will never be repeated on any American air base in Germany. Because since Flugtag 88, the US Air Forces in Europe have stopped military airshows over their installations.
I talked to Fran Curry in TippFM about what happened, omitting some causal factors that were never considered in the final accident report. You can listen on my blog or subscribe to the audio content I create throughout the month.
[Bernie Goldbach produces a podcast called Topgold's Audio Clips that you can find with all good podcatchers. The image on this post was snapped at the moment of impact between Pony 10 and Pony 1 from Frecce Tricolori overhead Ramstein Air Base, Germany on Sunday, August 28, 1988. The helicopter above was destroyed by the shrapnel from one of the incident aircraft.]
