Ramstein Airshow 25 years ago.

[camel1]

28-08-1988 / 28-08-2013

Maybe something to reflect on today.

It was 25 years ago at Ramstein AB, a terrible disaster................... and we all know what happened that day.

Maybe there are people who want to share their experience, people who were there on 28-08-1988.
Tell us your story on this topic.

Its not a daily and nice topic, but it will be interesting to read some of your experiences.
Maybe you don't want to talk about ever again.........understandable.

I had plans to go to Ramstein that day. But personal reasons forced me to stay home.......................


SWR Landesschau (sorry, in german)
http://www.swr.de/landesschau-aktuell/r ... 44/l3u9zp/


Best regards,

Coen Steenbeeke.

[TF-104G]

someone know the Serial from the burned Medevac UH-60 on the other side of the airfield ?

[herbie]

what about either 82-23726 or 82-23741 ? I have lost trace of their whereabouts and both were on strenght of 63rd MedDet in that period

[attila.szabo]

I had the choice to go to Ramstein as well that weekend, but also Nörvenich and Kleine-Brogel had an "Open House", so I made the decision not to go to Ramstein!
Afterwords I'm glade I wasn't there.

PS at the Air Show on Kleine Brogel also a small Finish trainer crashed...

Grtz.
Attila

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[SquAdmin]

Fortunately I wasn't there. One week earlier I attended my first airshow ever, at Deelen AB. Frecce performed there as well, but with a smaller team as one of the jets suffered a bird hit during take-off. Maybe this was a sign of worse things to come...

In 1993 we traveled to Fairford with HAT. For one of the guys in the group this was the first airshow he visited since he witnessed the crash at Ramstein. Seeing the two Russian MiG-29's crashing that day probably didn't help him to recover from the trauma...

[Bruno]

I was there

I was 16 years old, it was my first airshow outside France. I went with my father and my youngest brother.
The begining was a fantastic day for teenager like me. I saw all the airplanes that I dreamed to see.
Whole of the day we stayed close the place where the plane downed. But, not really fan about demoteam, we left this place and walked through the static display at the crash moment!
25 years after, I've got always the picture of the plane who exploses just after the collision! And the ball of fire without sound.
After the crash it took more than two hours to leave the air base, and we saw some injured people...

So, 25 years later, it's not a trauma, but since this, I have seen hundred times of crossing figures of demoteam, and each time, I've got a nasty feeling...

Bruno

[weasel]

i was there, my first airshow in Germany, it was a great show until the disaster.
i remember well the flyby of tornados from norvenich, team assas from portugal etc.
but then disaster strikes and all hell broke loose, still have a picture of an runway in flames.
i also remember how we where escorted back to the busses and how long it took to get us of base.
i was also at fairfort when the migs collided.
sometimes i still get sweaty hands from a demoteam.
cannot believe how fast 25 years have past...

[KeesvA]

In the period 1979-1988 I went to Ramstein almost every year.
Many times I was at Ramstein with spotters from Eelde.
We camped at the "Jagdhaus" between the base and the large USArmy depot.

In 1988 I was there with my wife and two very young kids. Hendrik C. was there with his wife.
We saw the accident and I still remembered the chaos afterwards. People crying, staring, some doing nothing, paralised. People searching for there kids, family but also searching for little things like a camping-chars or bags!

After the accident we walked to our tents near the Jagdhaus. In the chaos I found my sons "speentje" (sory what's the English word?) he had lost in the morning!

At our tents (Jagdhaus) we phoned our parents that we were save. Some minutes later all the phone-traffic was dead.
Helicopters from the static were used to fly wounded people.

That night we could not leave Ramstein and had to stay in our tents. The following morning we left the Jagdhaus and drove along many parked cars of people who were dead or wounded.

The day afterwards,on our way to the Netherlands, we saw several military a/c. Only the flying made us very scary. It lasted a month before I started spotting again.

I never understood why they made a monument of the 3 wrecks of MB-339PAN which caused the disaster. That were MM54474/Frecce 2, MM54481/Frecce1 and MM54552/Frecce10. I saw this monument at Cerbaiola 5-8-2005.

By the way a year and a day after the Ramstein diaster, a crash happened at Ramstein AB. A monument refers to it (western-approach)
Grz. KeesvA

[evhest]

You're probably referring to the C-5 Galaxy crash during Desert Shield; that was in august 1990, so two years after the Frecce crash.

[KeesvA]

Yes, that's correct. The C-5 had serial 80228 (68-0228)

Grz. KeesvA

[camel1]

You're probably referring to the C-5 Galaxy crash during Desert Shield; that was in august 1990, so two years after the Frecce crash.

http://rustyknight98.com/C5/C5.htm

[Paul van der Linden]

In the period 1979-1988 I went to Ramstein almost every year.

I never understood why they made a monument of the 3 wrecks of MB-339PAN which caused the disaster. That were MM54474/Frecce 2, MM54481/Frecce1 and MM54552/Frecce10. I saw this monument at Cerbaiola 5-8-2005.

By the way a year and a day after the Ramstein diaster, a crash happened at Ramstein AB. A monument refers to it (western-approach)
Grz. KeesvA

Hi Kees,

I have very similar memories to the Ramstein disaster. Remember that also three very skilled and probably very passioned pilots were killed while doing their thing which was entertaining the crowd. There was no crime or such thing involved in this terrible accident so why shouldn't it be allowed to remember the killed pilots also?

Gtz, Paul

[frank kramer]

I was at the airshow at Nörvenich when the crashes at Brogel and Ramstein took place; I had been to Brogel the day before and had decided to go for the Bratwurst instead of for the burgers on Sunday. Not a word was publicly mentioned there, but when other Eindhoven spotters were talking to a German AF pilot we knew, he asked them what was supposed to be flying at Ramstein at the time of the crash. As they had just gotten into Nörvenich (they had been to Ramstein in the morning), they knew and told him it was the Frecce Tricolori. He would not tell them why he asked it; we only found out when we had left Nörvenich and pulled into a gas station on the Autobahn... it was a very unreal feeling, but as I had witnessed the crash of Mirage 5 BA-05 at Sanicole 3 weeks earlier -which I can still recall very clearly 25 years on- I was happy and fortunate to have "missed" these two crashes...

[Laurent]

1988 Sanicole Airshow.... Mirage 5BA BA05 had a flame-out, still see it drifting towards the city of Leopolsburg and go down.... the most dramatic moment was when the commentator made an appeal for the wife and child of the pilot to come to the clubhouse, they witnessed the crash.....
Lucky first time.

1984, 1985, 1986, 1987... I was at Ramstein each year, 1988 we passed as Kleine Brogel (my 'home base') had an airshow. At KB a Finnish Redigo crashed OH-VTM (still remember the registration as a few years later the first commercial TV station in Belgium became.... VTM).
On the way I passed one of the tents from one of the local squadrons.... long faces there, here a pilot told what had happened at Ramstein...
Lucky second time.

1995 Five years later I witnessed the collision of the two MiGs at Fairford, it only saw the crash from a distance as due to the bad weather in the morning we (me and my brother) were still photographing the static.
Lucky again...

1997 I got some free tickets to go to the airshow in Oostende, nice show but.... I had a funny feeling. Many 'aerobatic' pilots (many of them amateurs) participated in a so-called 'Belgian championship'. The whole afternoon aircraft clearly crossed the display line and flew overhead... as I already said I started to get a funny feeling.
One of the highlights was the presence of Concorde. I'm not a 'civil' spotter, but that iconic aircraft I wanted to catch. The only descent spot to photograph was behind a small 'Red Cross' tent. About 15 minutes later a pilot from the Royal Jordanian Falcons took off to do a solo-display in in his Extra 300 'out of compitition'. Minutes later it crashed.... on the same 'Red Cross' tent.....
My luck was that because of the funny feeling (and because it started to rain) I decided to leave the airport before the end of the show. In the car I heard on the radio that there were 10 people injured.... a few minutes later the news updated, they had 10 'fatalities'.....

In total over my 34 years of 'spotting' and airshows I saw 6 crashes, 4 of which fatal....

I hope I didn't use up all my luck.... love this hobby too much, but it has made me think a lot...

Greetings

Laurent

[robertssb]

I was also there that day Frecce crashed into the crowd.
Can remember that it was my first trip outside The Netherlands with the Scramble bus, I really enjoyed the weather and all of the different type of aircraft which were parked at the static.
I was standing at the spot were the aircraft crashed into the crowd but 15 minutes before the aircraft crashed into it I deciced to look somewhere else, boy was I lucky that day.
I think I had an angel on my shoulder that day.
I can remember there was a big wall of sand between the place were the plane crashed into the crowd and the place were I was standing.
I only saw the aircraft crashing (exploding) on the runway (did not see the collision in the air), saw a lot of smoke and a huge fireball and a big cloud of smoke rising up in the air.
People in panic and running, ambulances driving on and off, luckily I did not see any injured or dead people.
We had to go back to the Scramble bus, a friend of mine at that time was standing a lot closer to the place were it happened, luckily only his eyebrowes were a bit burned ..he made some pictures of the accident and the huge fireball which was hanging above the crowd...
We were not able to make a call home because all the lines were overheated by the telephone traffic, my father watched it on the news and he thought that he saw me lying on the ground, so he thought I was dead or at least badly injured ... to his relief I called later that evening when we made a stop just when we past the border.
I hope not to experience such an accident again ... it made a deep impact on me .. but I still go to airshows... love the smell of kerosine ..