Crash of a Starfighter formation of the German Air Force in 1962
| Crash of a Starfighter formation of the German Air Force in 1962 | |
|---|---|
 Lockheed F-104F BB + 365 , one of the crashed aircraft |
|
| Accident summary | |
| Accident type | Controlled flight into terrain |
| place | Near Balkhausen (Kerpen) , Bergheim (Erft) district 50 ° 51 ′ 12.7 ″ N , 6 ° 44 ′ 28.9 ″ E |
| date | June 19, 1962 |
| Fatalities | 4th |
| Survivors | no |
| Injured | no |
| Aircraft | |
| Aircraft type | Lockheed F-104 |
| operator |
 air force
|
| Mark | BB + 365, BB + 370, BB + 385, BB + 387 |
| Departure airport |
Nörvenich Air Base, Germany
|
| Destination airport | Nörvenich Air Base |
| crew | 4th |
| Lists of aviation accidents | |
When the crash of a Starfighter was the formation of the Air Force of the Armed Forces crashed on June 19, 1962 four jet trainer type Lockheed F-104 F east of the airbase Nörvenich after the pilots in the clouds the lost orientation had. All four pilots were killed. The accident had far-reaching consequences for the aerobatic teams of the Bundeswehr .
procedure
prehistory
After the Bundestag had decided to procure the F-104, the Air Force began to build a corresponding infrastructure and to train pilots for the new model. The first planned for the Starfighter German pilots were trained at Lockheed itself in Palmdale , California ; However, it was planned from the outset to carry out the training in the Federal Republic of Germany when an appropriate personnel situation was reached .
Weapons School 10 was designated as the training association for this purpose, which was stationed at Jever Air Base and set up a 4th squadron on April 16, 1960 in Nörvenich to carry out the training. The first squadron captain of the squadron was Hans-Ulrich Flade. On May 1, 1962, the now greatly enlarged squadron was renamed II. Training Group.
On June 20, 1962, a ceremony was planned in Nörvenich to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Fighter Bomber Wing 31 and its conversion to the F-104. For this purpose, it was planned to have a formation of four machines fly an aerobatic demonstration , and a single aircraft should also perform further maneuvers to demonstrate the capabilities of the machine to the guests of the act. The guests should also include the Federal Minister of Defense Franz Josef Strauss .
accident
In preparation for the ceremony on June 20, the four aircraft took off on June 19, 1962 at around 3 p.m. (4 p.m. in other sources) in Nörvenich and began their flight demonstration. It was flown in the diamond formation, i.e. in the shape of a diamond with a distance of two to three meters between the wings of the aircraft. At around 3:15 p.m., the formation began to form a figure, where it briefly disappeared from the field of vision of the people waiting at the air base. After reappearing from the clouds, which were only about 600 meters high, the formation was too fast and flew with too high a rate of descent, so that it hit a lignite mine near the town of Balkhausen in what was then the Bergheim district . All four pilots were killed in the impact. Nobody had tried to save themselves with the ejection seat .
At around 3:10 p.m., another American flight instructor had rolled to the runway to fly the solo program; but he did not start anymore due to the crash of the formation.
The ceremony on the following day was canceled after the crash; instead, on June 22, 1962, a memorial service for the crashed pilots took place, at which Franz Josef Strauss gave the funeral speech.
Pilot
The US flight instructor Captain Jon Speer was the formation leader on the flight involved in the accident . The first three German F-104 flight instructors Wolfgang von Stürmer, Bernd Kuebart and Heinz Frye, all with the rank of first lieutenant , flew with him . Bernd Kuebart was the brother of the later Air Force inspector Hans-Jörg Kuebart . Kuebart and von Stürmer were also among the first pilots to be trained on the F-104 in the USA.
In addition to Jon Speer, other US flight instructors had been assigned to weapons school 10 to help with the training of new flight instructors, but also the retraining of pilots on the F-104, since the Air Force did not have enough of its own training personnel available at that time.
Aircraft
The formation was four Starfighters version F-104F with the Bundeswehr license plate BB + 365 , BB + 370 , BB 385 + and BB + 387 flown. The F version is a two-seater version of the aircraft with a more powerful engine than the previous series (A – D) and without radar in the nose of the fuselage, 32 of which were built for the German Air Force. In addition to this version, the Air Force also used the TF-104G version, modified from the single-seater F-104G, for training.
root cause
The Air Force, responsible for the investigation, has not yet published the accident report, but individual statements and results have appeared in the media and literature over time.
The clarification of the accident by the General Aviation Safety was made more difficult by the fact that only eyewitness reports and the radio communications of the pilots could be used for evaluation ; the aircraft in the accident did not have a flight data recorder or cockpit voice recorder . In the literature it is often assumed that the formation leader Jon Speer briefly lost his orientation in the clouds and could therefore have set the maneuver's intercepting arc too low. The fact that none of the pilots had tried to save themselves with the ejection seat suggests that the formation had not been aware of how deep the maneuver had gotten them until the end. As Bernd Kuebart and Heinz Frye, as usual in formation flight , only flew with eye contact to Speer and not to instruments , they were unable to assess and react accordingly.
Wolfgang von Stürmer's plane was found a little apart from the three other machines, from which it was concluded that he recognized that the formation was going too deep. His interception maneuver was unsuccessful, however, as he brought the Starfighter into a high-speed stall .
The official report stated that the causes were
- Jon Speer had too little experience in formation aerobatics,
- that he accidentally flew into the clouds and then lost his orientation,
- that the apex of the maneuver leading to the accident was set too low, the radius was too large for the speed and maneuverability of the F-104, and that the interception was too late.
The distraction and disorientation could have contributed to the fact that one of the two "wingmen" had come too close to Speer. One of the last radio messages from Speer was “Go away”. In the opinion of many F-104 pilots, it was generally a mistake to allow aerobatics with this type of aircraft, since the demands on the pilots were too high, who had to concentrate on flight parameters such as speed and maintaining the exact position.
consequences
As a result of the accident, both existing aerobatic teams of the Air Force in Landsberg and Lechfeld were disbanded and the start-up was prohibited. To date, the Bundeswehr has not lifted this ban and has not established its own aerobatic team. Only from 1983 to 1986 existed with the Vikings of the naval aviation a display team for flight demonstrations at flight days, which, however, did not perform any demonstrations on the scale of other teams, e.g. B. the United States Air Force Thunderbirds or the Patrouille Suisse flew.
See also
literature
- Death in the afternoon . In: Der Spiegel . No. 26 , 1962, pp. 16-18 ( online ).
- Aerobatic team . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1962, pp. 14 ( online ).
- Günther Rall: My flight log . 2nd Edition. Twenty-nine six publishing house, Moosburg an der Isar 2004, ISBN 3-9807935-4-0 .
- Klaus Kropf: German starfighters . Ed .: Johannes Mohn. JOMO-Medien-Service, Cologne 1994, ISBN 3-929574-03-9 , p. 31, 115-124, 161-165 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Failure to use - no secret . In: Der Spiegel . No. 49 , 1962, pp. 44–47 ( online - = The specialist magazine “Flug-Revue” on the “Starfighter Dilemma”).
- ↑ a b c Rall: My flight book. Moosburg 2004, pp. 282-284
- ↑ a b c d e f Hans-Jürgen Deglow: Swoop into death. In: Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. June 20, 2012, accessed February 5, 2015 .
- ^ Goiter: German starfighters. Cologne 1994, p. 136
- ^ Goiter: German starfighters. Cologne 1994, pp. 136-138