USAF Thunderbird incident at Chicago Air & Water S

[Simon]

The USAF Thunderbirds canceled their appearance on Sunday 21 Aug at the Chicago Air & Water Show after a wingtip mishap when they were performing their diamond maneuver at 350 MPH on Sat.
www.nbc5.com/news/4877816/detail.html?subid=10101401

The complete air-air audio of the incident is
images.suntimes.com/special_sections/thunderbirds/battle_damage_check.wav

Nice long listen to the T'birds audio during the incident at last Saturday's Chicago show. Be aware that it will take a while to load, even over a broadband connection.

[Dave Homewood]

Gosh, lucky it wasn't worse. These things do happen though with close formation teams. I recall when I was at Wigram the Red Ceckers were doing a lunchtime practice one day and one CT4's tail fin scraped the other's canopy during the mirror manouvre. Quite scary when you think where the propellors were at that moment! Luckily they were not harmed. I seem to recall the Thunderbirds used to do the mirror two till a tragic event stopped them. Was that them or another US team? I think the RNZAF are the last ones regularly doing it nowadays from what I'm told.

[Bruce]

Of course, If they needed to do an emergency landing they could always have used Meigs.... oh, thats right, a particularly forward thinking mayor wanted a park instead.....