Thunderbird accidents

"John A. Weeks III" wrote in message ...
In article , SA
wrote:

"While there were 36 major accidents that killed 24 Thunderbird pilots
between 1953 and 1981, there have been no fatalities and only one minor
accident since the 1982 tragedy -- a fact in which Creech took great pride."

Well, there was at least one fatality since 1982. A member of the
public crashed an auto through the airport gate and rammed one of
the F-16's as it was parked. I recall that the F-16 nose gear
collapsed in the impact, and the jet fell on the car, killing
the driver. I didn't look up the date, but I do recall this happening
at Selfridge in Michigan in the mid to late 90's.

Good friend of mine was the Chief of Police at Selfridge when that
happened. My faulty memory says 1993-1994. The driver was a dependent
who had been over at the Navy Club (Mole Hole) tossing a few back,
apparently, and in the middle of the night, instead of taking his car
thru the Navy Club parking lot toward the perimeter road, he drove out
onto the ramp (the Mole Hole is the old tanker alert facility.. its
literally right on the edge of the ramp), took a taxiway across the
runway and down another taxiway to where the T-birds were parked.
(They were on a taxiway away from all the other airshow aircraft for
security reasons) The roving sentry reported that the car didn't have
any lights on and he didn't even see it approaching until the last
second when he heard the motor revving up.

In true military fashion, **** ran downhill when it was time to assign
blame, so my friend the chief of police got axed instead of the
general in charge of the base. Even though they'd placed a higher
level of security on the T-Birds aircraft than they normally call for,
and that the sentries couldn't have done anything in time to stop that
car even if they'd been locked and loaded and there had been 10 of
them out there.

That was pretty messed up, however.

NIN