Ramstein airshow disaster
Encyclopedia
The Ramstein airshow disaster is the second-deadliest airshow incident (following that in 2002 at Sknyliv). It took place in front of about 300,000 people on August 28 1988, in Ramstein
, West Germany
, near the city of Kaiserslautern
at the US
Ramstein Air Base
airshow Flugtag '88.
Aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display, crashing to the ground. Sixty-seven spectators and three pilots died, 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire.
PAN jets from the Italian Air Force
display team, Frecce Tricolori
, were performing their 'pierced heart' (Italian: Cardioide, German: Durchstoßenes Herz) formation. In this formation, two groups of aircraft create a heart shape in front of the audience along the runway. In the completion of the lower tip of the heart, the two groups of planes pass each other parallel to the runway. The heart is then pierced, in the direction of the audience, by a lone aircraft.
took place as the two heart-forming groups passed each other and the heart-piercing aircraft hit them. 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.
At 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 pilot, Captain Kim Strader. He died weeks later, on September 17 1988, at Brooke Army Medical Center
in Texas
, from burns he suffered in the accident.
The pilot of the aircraft that hit the helicopter had ejected, but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute
opened. The third aircraft disintegrated in the collision and parts of it were spread along the runway.
After the crash, the remaining aircraft regrouped and landed at Sembach Air Base.
in the form of airplane parts, concertina wire
and debris from items on the ground. Sixteen of the fatalities occurred in the days and weeks after the disaster due to severe burns
, the last being the burned and injured pilot from the helicopter.
About 500 people had to seek hospital treatment following the event.
The disaster revealed serious shortcomings in the handling of large-scale medical emergencies by German civil and American military authorities and their cooperation. The American military did not allow German ambulances to enter the base and let them help immediately. The rescue work was criticized for lacking efficiency and coordination. The rescue coordination center in Kaiserslautern
was unaware of the disaster's scale as much as an hour after its occurrence, although several German Medevac
helicopters and ambulances had already arrived on site and left with patients. American helicopters and ambulances provided the quickest and largest capacities for evacuating burn victims, but could not provide sufficient capacities for treating them or had difficulty finding them. More confusion was added-to by the American military using different standards for intravenous
catheter
s from German paramedics before a single standard was codified in 1995.
Over 600 people reported to the clinic that afternoon to donate blood.
A crisis counseling center was immediately established at the nearby Southside Base Chapel and remained open through the week. Base mental health professionals provided group and individual counseling in the weeks following, and surveyed the response workers two months following the tragedy and again six months after the disaster to gauge recovery.
Pony 10, the aircraft that started the crash, now completely out of control, in flames, and with the forward section disintegrated following the impact with Pony 1, continued on a ballistic trajectory across the runway. The plane hit the ground ahead of the spectator's stands, exploding in a fireball and destroying a police vehicle that had been parked on the "runway" side of the concertina wire that defined the active runway area. The plane continued, cartwheeling for a distance before picking up the three strand concertina wire fence, crossing an emergency access road, slamming into the crowd, and hitting a parked ice cream van. The crash site was considered the "best seats in the house", being centered on the flightline and as close to the airshow as civilian spectators could get. It was the first area in the airshow viewing area that was very crowded. The entire incident, from collision of the first two planes to the crash into the spectators, took less than seven seconds, leaving no time for people in the crowd to run away. The low altitude of the maneuver (45 meters above the crowd) also contributed to the short time frame.
An examination of photos and footage from the disaster showed that Pony 10's landing gear came down at some point; it has been suggested that this could have been lowered intentionally as a last second effort by Lt. Col. Nutarelli to try and slow his plane down to avoid the impact, but there is no substantial evidence pointing to this, the undercarriage could have been lowered by a number of factors. In January 1991, Werner Reith, a German journalist from the newspaper Tageszeitung, suggested in an article that the Ramstein disaster could have been caused by some sudden technical problem – or even sabotage – in Nutarelli's plane; again, no possible evidence could be collected, Reith pointed out that Lt. Col. Nutarelli and Lt. Col. Naldini were supposed to know details about another air disaster, the 1980 Ustica Massacre
, citing Italian press sources. Judge Rosario Priore, who was investigating the case at the time, found that they were performing training flights nearby minutes before the Ustica incident, but he definitely rejected their deaths as sabotage.
Ramstein-Miesenbach
Ramstein-Miesenbach is a municipality in the district of Kaiserslautern in Rhineland-Palatinate in Germany.-History:As a result of the State of Rheinland-Pfalz administrative reform, Ramstein-Miesenbach, which has a population of approx. 9200, was created on 7 June 1969 from the independent...
, West Germany
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....
, near the city of Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern is a city in southwest Germany, located in the Bundesland of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate forest . The historic centre dates to the 9th century. It is from Paris, from Frankfurt am Main, and from Luxembourg.Kaiserslautern is home to 99,469 people...
at the US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Ramstein Air Base
Ramstein Air Base
Ramstein Air Base is a United States Air Force base in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz. It serves as headquarters for the United States Air Forces in Europe and is also a North Atlantic Treaty Organization installation...
airshow Flugtag '88.
Aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display, crashing to the ground. Sixty-seven spectators and three pilots died, 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire.
Background
Ten Aermacchi MB-339Aermacchi MB-339
The Aermacchi MB-339 is an Italian military trainer and light attack aircraft. It was developed as a replacement for the earlier MB-326.-Design and development:...
PAN jets from the Italian Air Force
Aeronautica Militare
The Italian Air Force is the air force of the Italian Republic. It has held a prominent role in modern Italian military history...
display team, Frecce Tricolori
Frecce Tricolori
The Frecce Tricolori , officially known as the 313° Gruppo Addestramento Acrobatico, is the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Aeronautica Militare, based at Rivolto Air Force Base, in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, province of Udine...
, were performing their 'pierced heart' (Italian: Cardioide, German: Durchstoßenes Herz) formation. In this formation, two groups of aircraft create a heart shape in front of the audience along the runway. In the completion of the lower tip of the heart, the two groups of planes pass each other parallel to the runway. The heart is then pierced, in the direction of the audience, by a lone aircraft.
The crash
The mid-air collisionMid-air collision
A mid-air collision is an aviation accident in which two or more aircraft come into contact during flight. Owing to the relatively high velocities involved and any subsequent impact on the ground or sea, very severe damage or the total destruction of at least one of the aircraft involved usually...
took place as the two heart-forming groups passed each other and the heart-piercing aircraft hit them. The piercing aircraft crashed onto the runway and consequently both the fuselage and resulting fireball of aviation fuel
Aviation fuel
Aviation fuel is a specialized type of petroleum-based fuel used to power aircraft. It is generally of a higher quality than fuels used in less critical applications, such as heating or road transport, and often contains additives to reduce the risk of icing or explosion due to high temperatures,...
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.
At the same time, one of the damaged aircraft from the heart-forming group crashed into the emergency medical evacuation
MEDEVAC
Medical evacuation, often termed Medevac or Medivac, is the timely and efficient movement and en route care provided by medical personnel to the wounded being evacuated from the battlefield or to injured patients being evacuated from the scene of an accident to receiving medical facilities using...
UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, injuring the pilot, Captain Kim Strader. He died weeks later, on September 17 1988, at Brooke Army Medical Center
Brooke Army Medical Center
Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston, San Antonio is part of the United States Army Medical Command. It is a University of Texas Health Science Center and USUHS teaching hospital and contains the Army Burn Center....
in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, from burns he suffered in the accident.
The pilot of the aircraft that hit the helicopter had ejected, but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute
Parachute
A parachute is a device used to slow the motion of an object through an atmosphere by creating drag, or in the case of ram-air parachutes, aerodynamic lift. Parachutes are usually made out of light, strong cloth, originally silk, now most commonly nylon...
opened. The third aircraft disintegrated in the collision and parts of it were spread along the runway.
After the crash, the remaining aircraft regrouped and landed at Sembach Air Base.
Timeline
| Time | Details |
|---|---|
| 15:40 | Start of the Frecce Tricolori Frecce Tricolori The Frecce Tricolori , officially known as the 313° Gruppo Addestramento Acrobatico, is the aerobatic demonstration team of the Italian Aeronautica Militare, based at Rivolto Air Force Base, in the north-eastern Italian region of Friuli Venezia Giulia, province of Udine... |
| 15:44 | Collision involving the planes with callsigns Pony 1, Pony 2 and Pony 10 |
| 15:46 | Fire fighters arrive |
| 15:48 | First American ambulance Ambulance An ambulance is a vehicle for transportation of sick or injured people to, from or between places of treatment for an illness or injury, and in some instances will also provide out of hospital medical care to the patient... arrives |
| 15:51 | First American ambulance helicopter arrives |
| 15:52 | Second American ambulance helicopter arrives |
| 15:54 | First American ambulance helicopter takes off |
| 16:10 | German ambulance helicopter, Christoph 5 from Ludwigshafen, arrives |
| 16:11 | German ambulance helicopter, Christoph 16 from Saarbrücken Saarbrücken Saarbrücken is the capital of the state of Saarland in Germany. The city is situated at the heart of a metropolitan area that borders on the west on Dillingen and to the north-east on Neunkirchen, where most of the people of the Saarland live.... , arrives |
| 16:13 | 10 American and German ambulances arrive |
| 16:28 | About 10–15 ambulances arrive. 8 medical helicopters (US Air Force, ADAC, SAR) at the scene |
| 16:33 | First medical helicopter of the Rettungsflugwache arrives |
| 16:35 | Doctor on emergency call over the radio: "We are searching for burn patients Burn A burn is an injury to flesh caused by heat, electricity, chemicals, light, radiation, or friction.Burn may also refer to:*Combustion*Burn , type of watercourses so named in Scotland and north-eastern England... that are pulled and transported unaided away from us by the Americans. They told us nobody from them are here no more. Not all the injured people are transported away by helicopter or ambulance. There is total chaos around us and some of the injured are even transported on pick-up trucks that are not leaving [via the] emergency exit, they are driving beside the drifting visitors. It was a terrible sight to see people with burnt clothes and sagging burnt skin, squirming with pain or transfixed and shocked with pain on these vehicles." |
| 16:40 | First low platform trailer for transport of the dead bodies arrives |
| 16:45 | Second low platform trailer for transport of the dead bodies arrives |
| 16:47 | At that time the German headquarters for emergencies had no clue of the scale of the disaster, made obvious by the radio communication: "Yes, and that is the problem. We don't know yet what has happened, how many injuries and what else. The leading emergency medical did not send any feedback yet. He wants to have a synoptic view first." |
| 17:00 | Helicopters begin arriving en masse at Landstuhl Army Hospital. |
| 17:00 | At that time several medics arrive with helicopters. Later they said: "At the time we arrived shortly after 5:00 there were no injured people no more. We could see that the last badly injured people were loaded into American helicopters. We could see some pick-up trucks with injured people transporting them away. It was not possible to find an officer in charge, a director of operations or even a contact person [...] so we got to the Johannis hospital in Landstuhl by [our] own initiative. Asking several action forces, paramedics, police officers nobody could name a director of operations. I was asking for a managing paramedic of the operation to coordinate the evacuation. But there was none." |
| 18:05 | An ambulance helicopter arrives at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The paramedic said later: "We found a large number of severely burnt, badly injured people absolutely unaided. [...] When I arrived in Landstuhl, severely burnt people partly lay on wooden planks and no paramedics were there. After I aided an injured person and left her with a hospital nurse that attended us at the flight, I was treating several injured people at the helicopter landing zone at the military hospital and did not see even one American medic there." |
| 18:20 | Dead bodies are transported away from the scene with the two platform trucks |
| 18:30 | A bus full of injured people arrives in Ludwigshafen (80 km away). A paramedic later said either: "five severely burnt people were inside the bus. There was no paramedic attending this transport." |
Emergency response
Of the 31 people who died at the scene, 28 had been hit by shrapnelFragmentation (weaponry)
Fragmentation is the process by which the casing of an artillery shell, bomb, grenade, etc. is shattered by the detonating high explosive filling. The correct technical terminology for these casing pieces is fragments , although shards or splinters can be used for non-preformed fragments...
in the form of airplane parts, concertina wire
Concertina wire
Concertina wire or Dannert Wire is a type of barbed wire or razor wire that is formed in large coils which can be expanded like a concertina. In conjunction with plain barbed wire and steel pickets, it is used to form military wire obstacles....
and debris from items on the ground. Sixteen of the fatalities occurred in the days and weeks after the disaster due to severe burns
Burn (injury)
A burn is a type of injury to flesh caused by heat, electricity, chemicals, light, radiation or friction. Most burns affect only the skin . Rarely, deeper tissues, such as muscle, bone, and blood vessels can also be injured...
, the last being the burned and injured pilot from the helicopter.
About 500 people had to seek hospital treatment following the event.
The disaster revealed serious shortcomings in the handling of large-scale medical emergencies by German civil and American military authorities and their cooperation. The American military did not allow German ambulances to enter the base and let them help immediately. The rescue work was criticized for lacking efficiency and coordination. The rescue coordination center in Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern
Kaiserslautern is a city in southwest Germany, located in the Bundesland of Rhineland-Palatinate at the edge of the Palatinate forest . The historic centre dates to the 9th century. It is from Paris, from Frankfurt am Main, and from Luxembourg.Kaiserslautern is home to 99,469 people...
was unaware of the disaster's scale as much as an hour after its occurrence, although several German Medevac
MEDEVAC
Medical evacuation, often termed Medevac or Medivac, is the timely and efficient movement and en route care provided by medical personnel to the wounded being evacuated from the battlefield or to injured patients being evacuated from the scene of an accident to receiving medical facilities using...
helicopters and ambulances had already arrived on site and left with patients. American helicopters and ambulances provided the quickest and largest capacities for evacuating burn victims, but could not provide sufficient capacities for treating them or had difficulty finding them. More confusion was added-to by the American military using different standards for intravenous
Intravenous therapy
Intravenous therapy or IV therapy is the infusion of liquid substances directly into a vein. The word intravenous simply means "within a vein". Therapies administered intravenously are often called specialty pharmaceuticals...
catheter
Catheter
In medicine, a catheter is a tube that can be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel. Catheters thereby allow drainage, administration of fluids or gases, or access by surgical instruments. The process of inserting a catheter is catheterization...
s from German paramedics before a single standard was codified in 1995.
Over 600 people reported to the clinic that afternoon to donate blood.
A crisis counseling center was immediately established at the nearby Southside Base Chapel and remained open through the week. Base mental health professionals provided group and individual counseling in the weeks following, and surveyed the response workers two months following the tragedy and again six months after the disaster to gauge recovery.
Investigation
Different video recordings of the accident were taped. Upon completing the cardioid figure, the piercing aircraft (Pony 10) came in too low and too fast at the crossing point with the other two groups (five aircraft on the left and four on the right) completing the heart shaped figure. Lieutenant Colonel Ivo Nutarelli, lead pilot and flying Pony 10, was unable to correct his altitude or slow his speed and collided with the leading airplane (Pony 1, piloted by Lt. Col. Mario Naldini) of the left formation "inside" the figure, destroying the plane's tail section with the front of his aircraft. Pony 1 then spiralled out of control, hitting the closer plane on its lower left (Pony 2, piloted by Captain Giorgio Alessio). Lt. Col. Naldini ejected but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened, his plane crashed onto a taxiway near the runway, destroying a medevac helicopter and fatally injuring the pilot, Captain Kim Strader. Pony 2, the third plane to be involved in the disaster, was severely damaged from the impact of Pony 1 and crashed onto and beside the runway, exploding in a fireball. Captain Alessio died instantly and small fragments of the plane were spread along the runway.Pony 10, the aircraft that started the crash, now completely out of control, in flames, and with the forward section disintegrated following the impact with Pony 1, continued on a ballistic trajectory across the runway. The plane hit the ground ahead of the spectator's stands, exploding in a fireball and destroying a police vehicle that had been parked on the "runway" side of the concertina wire that defined the active runway area. The plane continued, cartwheeling for a distance before picking up the three strand concertina wire fence, crossing an emergency access road, slamming into the crowd, and hitting a parked ice cream van. The crash site was considered the "best seats in the house", being centered on the flightline and as close to the airshow as civilian spectators could get. It was the first area in the airshow viewing area that was very crowded. The entire incident, from collision of the first two planes to the crash into the spectators, took less than seven seconds, leaving no time for people in the crowd to run away. The low altitude of the maneuver (45 meters above the crowd) also contributed to the short time frame.
An examination of photos and footage from the disaster showed that Pony 10's landing gear came down at some point; it has been suggested that this could have been lowered intentionally as a last second effort by Lt. Col. Nutarelli to try and slow his plane down to avoid the impact, but there is no substantial evidence pointing to this, the undercarriage could have been lowered by a number of factors. In January 1991, Werner Reith, a German journalist from the newspaper Tageszeitung, suggested in an article that the Ramstein disaster could have been caused by some sudden technical problem – or even sabotage – in Nutarelli's plane; again, no possible evidence could be collected, Reith pointed out that Lt. Col. Nutarelli and Lt. Col. Naldini were supposed to know details about another air disaster, the 1980 Ustica Massacre
Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870
Aerolinee Itavia Flight 870, also known in the Italian media as the Ustica Massacre , was an Italian flight which crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea while en route from Bologna, Italy, to Palermo, Italy, in 1980. The crash has been attributed to either a terrorist bomb or to an air-to-air missile...
, citing Italian press sources. Judge Rosario Priore, who was investigating the case at the time, found that they were performing training flights nearby minutes before the Ustica incident, but he definitely rejected their deaths as sabotage.
See also
- Sknyliv airshow disaster
- 2011 Reno Air Races crash2011 Reno Air Races crashOn September 16, 2011, at the Reno Air Races, a North American P-51D Mustang flown by James K. "Jimmy" Leeward crashed into spectators, killing 11 people including the pilot, and injuring at least 69. It was the third-deadliest airshow disaster in U.S. history, following accidents in 1972 and 1951,...
- List of airshow accidents
External links
- Le crash de Ramstein – Extensive photo gallery
- Robert-Stetter.de – Photo gallery of the incident
- Flugtag88 Memorial – Includes eyewitness accounts
- West Germany Hellfire from The Heavens – TimeTime (magazine)Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine article from 12 September 1988 - Airliners.net – Marc Heesters' photograph of the incident
- Ramstein – The air show catastrophe and its aftermath – Information about 2008 documentary, a WDR and SWRSüdwestrundfunkThe Südwestrundfunk is a public broadcasting company for the southwest of Germany, specifically the states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate. The company has main offices in three cities: Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz, with the director's office being in Stuttgart. It is an...
co-production - Complete aerobatic maneuver including crash (video)