The fire in the sky

A number of eyewitnesses reported seeing the plane on fire before it crashed, suggesting a mechanical failure, rather than pilot error. John Bertrand of Rochester was only 10-years old when he and his friends were leaving the Wentworth School not far from the crash site. They heard a loud noise, looked up, and saw the FB-111A fly over on fire with smoke flying out the back end. Today Bertrand recalls the event "like it was yesterday". He says:

"It flew over the school out toward the [Sea Crest Village] neighborhood and over the high rise bridge, looped around – explosion – they ejected, plane landed in the neighborhood… It was on fire when it flew over the school…I remember watching it fly over on fire because me and 10 of my friends ran as fast as we could to our houses to see if our houses got blown up."

George and Fanny Whitney of Kittery were heading home on Route 236 in Eliot, Maine as they watched the ill-fated bomber in the distance for 15 to 20 seconds. Mr. Whitney, formerly a deputy fire chief at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for 30 years, saw a plane that "appeared to be on fire" off to his right.

"I saw an explosion after that, "Whitney says today. "I saw a lot of smoke first and then an explosion after that, and then something come out of the plane and went up in the air. I thought it was the pilot, and he was coming down in a parachute."

Soon after the event Whitney was called to testify for the Air Force investigators. He spoke for only one or two minutes, he recalls, and was asked very few questions. "My feeling was, well, that they didn’t really care because I was so far away that what I saw wasn’t really what I saw."

In the end, the mishap report concluded that there was "no evidence of an inflight fire." Those who saw flames, according to investigators, likely saw the momentary explosion when the pilot fired his afterburners in hopes of regaining control. Others may have seen flames when the escape capsule ejected. Because different people saw fire coming from the aircraft at different locations and at different times their observations were considered inconclusive. Yet despite the blanket denial, a careful reading of the mishap report turns up a single sooty area that, analysts admitted, might indicate a possible inflight fire.

The horrific "ball of fire" created by the impact made mechanical analysis difficult, if not impossible. The jet fell 4,000 feet almost straight down, dropping like a rock, nose-first into a granite hillside, carrying 15,500 pounds of jet fuel. The blaze was still going when the first firefighters arrived on the scene 11 minutes later.

Many of the wrecked parts of the bomber, the horizontal stabilizer, for example, are listed in the report as "condemned, cause unknown." The condition of many key parts, according to one investigator, "prevented a complete and accurate analysis of a probable cause." Another notation reads: "We are unable to make any analysis based on the available information." The plane’s "black box" containing final recorded details was apparently not recovered, adding to the mystery.

CONTINUE FB-111A Crash