Flight Accidents in the 21st Century U.S. Air Force

Mid-flight noncombat mishaps and blunders occur frequently in the USAF during training and utility flights—sometimes with the loss of life and regularly with the destruction of expensive aircraft. In one extreme case, a $2.2 billion B-2 Spirit bomber crashed soon after takeoff and was destroyed. The events surrounding such accidents are gathered by USAF investigators and a report is published for each case. The author has collected these reports, including some made available following FOI (Freedom of Information) requests to U.S. air bases, and rewritten them in language accessible to the general public. The causes—bird-strikes, joy-riding, unauthorized maneuvers, pilot disorientation, an unseen binoculars-case blocking the plane’s joystick, unexpected moisture in an air-pressure gauge—are often surprising and, at times, horrifying.

Henry Bond is senior lecturer in photography at Kingston University in Surrey, England.

Henry Bond
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 201
Bibliographic Info: 28 photos, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7402-5
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3350-3
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments v
Preface 1
The Accidents
1 Pitch up 9
2 Number 3 engine idle 13
3 Landing strut 18
4 Caught a tailwind 21
5 Fly-by 25
6 Zero-G parabolas 29
7 Arctic Thunder 32
8 C-Bleed hot 36
9 Ground-rush in Germany 41
10 Flameout Volk 45
11 Mist-up AirVenture 48
12 Warthog seizure 52
13 Walan Rabat 57
14 Overshoot Shank 61
15 Paddy field 65
16 Communications mast 69
17 Titanium fire 73
18 Belly flop 76
19 Cut-up wake 80
20 Fuel-line shutoff 83
21 Flaps gone 87
22 Roll off the top 92
23 Spatial D 96
24 Dutch roll 100
25 Stockton impromptu 104
26 Okinawa corkscrew 108
27 Birdstrike Luke 112
28 Lights-out intercept 116
29 Racetrack gun pattern 120
30 Fuel-line leak 124
31 Cley goose strike 128
32 Domestic object 132
33 Down to Louisiana 136
34 Ghostrider 139
35 Fire by the microwave 143
36 Unseen traffic 147
37 Goggles case 151
38 Three-out takeoff 156
39 Inadvertent shutoff 160
40 Eject, dude 165
Conclusions 169
Sources 183
Index 191