The Ramstein air show disaster occurred on Sunday, 28 August 1988 during the Flugtag '88 airshow at USAF Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern, West Germany. Three aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display, crashing to the ground in front of a crowd of about 300,000 people. There were 70 fatalities (67 spectators and three pilots) and 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire, and hundreds more had minor injuries.[1] At the time it was the deadliest air show accident in history until a 2002 crash at the Sknyliv air show that killed 77.[2]
Ten Aermacchi MB-339 PAN jets from the Italian Air Force display team, Frecce Tricolori, were performing their "pierced heart" (Italian: Cardioide, German: Durchstoßenes Herz) formation. In this formation, two groups of aircraft create a heart shape in front of the audience along the runway. In the completion of the lower tip of the heart, the two groups pass each other parallel to the runway. The heart is then pierced by a lone aircraft, flying in the direction of spectators.
The mid-air collision took place as the two heart-forming groups passed each other and the heart-piercing aircraft hit them. The piercing aircraft crashed onto the runway and consequently both the fuselage and resulting fireball of aviation fuel tumbled into the spectator area, hitting the crowd and coming to rest against a refrigerated trailer being used to dispense ice cream to the various vendor booths in the area.
At the same time, one of the damaged aircraft from the heart-forming group crashed into the emergency medical evacuationUH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, injuring the helicopter's pilot, Captain Kim Strader. He died 20 days later, on Saturday, 17 September 1988, at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from burns he suffered in the accident.
The pilot of the aircraft that hit the helicopter ejected, but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened. The third aircraft disintegrated in the collision and parts of it were strewn along the runway.
After the crash, the remaining aircraft regrouped and landed at Sembach Air Base.
The flight-paths of the Frecce Tricolori aircraft
Emergency response
Scope
Of the 31 people who died on impact, 28 had been hit by debris in the form of airplane parts, concertina wire, and items on the ground.[3] Sixteen of the fatalities occurred in the days and weeks after the disaster due to severe burns; the last was the burned and injured helicopter pilot.[4] About 500 people had to seek hospital treatment following the event,[citation needed] and over 600 people reported to the clinic that afternoon to donate blood.[citation needed]
Criticism
The disaster revealed serious shortcomings in the handling of large-scale medical emergencies by German civil and American military authorities. US military personnel did not immediately allow German ambulances onto the base, and the rescue work was generally hampered by a lack of efficiency and coordination.[5] The rescue coordination center in Kaiserslautern was unaware of the disaster's scale as much as an hour after it occurred, even though several German medevac helicopters and ambulances had already arrived on site and left with patients. American helicopters and ambulances provided the quickest and largest means of evacuating burn victims, but lacked sufficient capacities for treating them, or had difficulty finding them. Further confusion was added by the American military's usage of different standards for intravenouscatheters from German paramedics. A single standard was codified in 1995 and updated with a newer version in 2013.[6]
Actions
A crisis counseling center was immediately established at the nearby Southside Base Chapel and remained open throughout the week. Base mental health professionals provided group and individual counseling in the following weeks, and they surveyed the response workers two months following the tragedy and again six months after the disaster to gauge recovery.[7]
Doctor on emergency call over the radio: "We are searching for burnt patients that are pulled and transported unaided away from us by the Americans. They told us nobody from them are here no more. Not all the injured people are transported away by helicopter or ambulance. There is total chaos around us and some of the injured are even transported on pickup trucks that are not leaving on emergency exit, they are driving beside the drifting visitors. It was a terrible sight to see people with burnt clothes and sagging burnt skin, squirming with pain of transfixed and shocked with pain[clarification needed] on these vehicles."
16:40
First low platform trailer for transport of the dead bodies arrives
16:45
Second low platform trailer for transport of the dead bodies arrives
16:47
At that time the German headquarters for emergencies had no clue of the dimensions, obvious by the radio communication: "Yes, and that is the problem. We don't know yet what had happened, how many injuries and what else. The leading emergency medical did not send any feedback yet. He wants to have a synoptic view first"
17:00
At that time several medics arrive with helicopters. Later they said: "At the time we arrived shortly after 5:00 there were no injured people no more. We could see that the last badly injured people were loaded into American helicopters. We could see some pickup trucks with injured people transporting them away. It was not possible to find an officer in charge, a director of operations or even a contact person [...] so we got to the Johannis hospital in Landstuhl by own initiative. Asking several action forces, paramedics, police officers nobody could name a director of operations. I was asking for a managing paramedic of the operation to coordinate the evacuation. But there was none."
18:05
An ambulance helicopter arrives at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center. The paramedic said later: "We found a large number of severely burnt, badly injured people absolutely unaided. [...] When I arrived in Landstuhl, severely burnt people partly lay on wooden planks and no paramedics were there. After I aided an injured person and left her with a hospital nurse that attended us at the flight, I was treating several injured people at the helicopter landing zone at the military hospital and did not see even one American medic there"
18:20
Dead bodies are transported away from the scene with the two platform trucks
18:30
A bus full of injured people arrives in Ludwigshafen (80 km away). A paramedic later said: "5 severely burnt people were inside the bus. There was no paramedic attending this transport. Just a non-German speaking driver unfamiliar with the area, on an odyssey through the town until he was able to find the hospital."
A map of the airshow facilities and accident details
Several different video recordings of the accident were made. They show that the "piercing" aircraft (Pony 10) came in too low and too fast at the crossing point with the other two groups (five aircraft on the left and four on the right) as they completed the heart-shaped figure. Lead pilot Lieutenant Colonel Ivo Nutarelli, flying Pony 10, was unable to correct his altitude or lower his speed, and collided with the leading airplane (Pony 1, piloted by Lt. Col. Mario Naldini) of the left formation "inside" the figure, destroying the plane's tail section with the front of his aircraft.[citation needed] Pony 1 then spiralled out of control, hitting the plane on its lower left (Pony 2, piloted by Captain Giorgio Alessio). Lt. Col. Naldini ejected but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened. His plane crashed onto a taxiway near the runway, destroying a medevac helicopter and fatally injuring its pilot, Captain Kim Strader. Pony 2, the third plane involved in the disaster, was severely damaged from the impact with Pony 1, and crashed beside the runway, exploding in a fireball. Its pilot, Captain Alessio, died on impact.
Pony 10, the aircraft that started the crash, continued on a ballistic trajectory across the runway, completely out of control and in flames, its forward section destroyed by the impact with Pony 1. The plane hit the ground ahead of the spectator stands, exploding in a fireball and destroying a police vehicle parked inside the concertina-wire fence that defined the active runway area. The plane continued, cartwheeling for a distance before picking up the three-strand concertina-wire fence, crossing an emergency access road, slamming into the crowd, and hitting a parked ice cream van. The area of the crash, being centered on the flightline and as close to the airshow as civilian spectators could get, had been considered the "best seats in the house", and was densely packed. The entire incident, from the collision of the first two planes to the crash into the crowd, took less than seven seconds, leaving almost no time for spectators to escape. The low altitude of the maneuver (45 meters above the crowd) also contributed to the short time frame.
An examination of photos and footage from the disaster showed that Pony 10's landing gear came down at some point; it has been suggested that this could have been lowered intentionally as a last second effort by Lt. Col. Nutarelli to slow his plane down and avoid the impact, but there is no substantial evidence pointing to this; the undercarriage could have been lowered by a number of factors. In April 1991, Werner Reith, a German journalist from the newspaper Die Tageszeitung, suggested in an article that the Ramstein disaster could have been caused by some sudden technical problem—or even sabotage—in Nutarelli's plane. No supporting evidence could be collected. Reith pointed out that Lt. Col. Nutarelli and Lt. Col. Naldini were supposed to know details about another air disaster, the 1980 Ustica massacre, citing Italian press sources.[9] Judge Rosario Priore, who was investigating the case at the time, found that they were performing training flights nearby minutes before the Ustica incident, but he definitely rejected their deaths as sabotage.
References in popular culture
The airshow disaster memorial with the names of the victims
In games
A similar disaster is portrayed in the German made strategy PC game Emergency: Fighters for Life which is Mission 22
In literature
Both Ramstein Air Force Base and the Ramstein air disaster figure as plot points in Donna Leon's second Guido Brunetti novel, Death in a Strange Country (1993)
In music
The Neue Deutsche Härte band Rammstein was named after this catastrophe. The second "M" was initially added by mistake, but the band eventually embraced the misspelling as its literal translation is "Ramming Stone."[10] Rammstein's self-titled song (on the album Herzeleid (1995)) is also a reference to the event.[11]
DJ and record producer Boris Brejcha was a 6-year old in the crowd, and was badly burned by the flames. He describes his style as high-tech minimal, as it reflects his subsequent isolation, using the Venetian Carnival mask as his logo.
^1988 Ramstein air crash stirs memories 2011-08-26 at the Wayback Machine, www.stripes.com
^. Archived from the original on 2013-04-03. Retrieved 2011-03-24.
^Ramstein survivor support group. "Ramstein-Katastrophe".
^"SL Army officer burned in air show crash dies". Deseret News.
^"Ramstein Air Show Disaster Kills 70, Injures Hundreds". Wired. August 2009.
^. Archived from the original on 2016-06-17. Retrieved 2013-10-07.
^Ursano, Robert J., M.D. (Editor) & Fullerton, Carol S. (Editor) & Wright, Kathy M. (Editor) & McCarroll, James E. (Editor). . Department of Military Psychiatry, et al. p. 12ff. Archived from the original on October 9, 2012.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
^Katastrophen-Nachsorge – Am Beispiel der Aufarbeitung der Flugkatastrophe von Ramstein 1988, Hartmut Jatzko, Sybille Jatzko, Heiner Seidlitz, Verlag Stumpf & Kossendey 2. Auflage. 2001, ISBN3-932750-54-3.
^Reith, Werner (20 April 1991). "Tod in Ramstein: Spur in Italien". Die Tageszeitung. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
^Galenza/Havemeister (2003). Feeling B. Mix mir einen Drink. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf. p. 262.
^. Herzeleid. Archived from the original on 2017-12-07. Retrieved 2019-01-23. Quote from MTV interview.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ramstein air show disaster.
Le crash de Ramstein (in French) – extensive photo gallery
ramstein, show, disaster, occurred, sunday, august, 1988, during, flugtag, airshow, usaf, ramstein, base, near, kaiserslautern, west, germany, three, aircraft, italian, force, display, team, collided, during, their, display, crashing, ground, front, crowd, abo. The Ramstein air show disaster occurred on Sunday 28 August 1988 during the Flugtag 88 airshow at USAF Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern West Germany Three aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display crashing to the ground in front of a crowd of about 300 000 people There were 70 fatalities 67 spectators and three pilots and 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire and hundreds more had minor injuries 1 At the time it was the deadliest air show accident in history until a 2002 crash at the Sknyliv air show that killed 77 2 Ramstein air show disasterCollisionDateAugust 28 1988 1988 08 28 SummaryMid air collisionSiteUSAF Ramstein Air BaseRhineland PalatinateWest Germany 49 26 18 N 007 36 13 E 49 43833 N 7 60361 E 49 43833 7 60361 Coordinates 49 26 18 N 007 36 13 E 49 43833 N 7 60361 E 49 43833 7 60361Total fatalities70 67 on ground Total injuries500 on ground First aircraftTypeAermacchi MB 339PANNameCallsign Pony 10 OperatorFrecce TricoloriAeronautica MilitareCrewLt Col Ivo Nutarelli killed Second aircraftTypeAermacchi MB 339PANNameCallsign Pony 1 OperatorFrecce TricoloriAeronautica MilitareCrewLt Col Mario Naldini killed Third aircraftTypeAermacchi MB 339PANNameCallsign Pony 2 OperatorFrecce TricoloriAeronautica MilitareCrewCpt Giorgio Alessio killed Ground casualtiesGround fatalities67Ground injuries500 The memorial set up to commemorate the victims Contents 1 Background 2 The crash 3 Emergency response 3 1 Scope 3 2 Criticism 3 3 Actions 3 4 Timeline 4 Investigation 5 References in popular culture 6 See also 7 References 8 External linksBackground EditTen Aermacchi MB 339 PAN jets from the Italian Air Force display team Frecce Tricolori were performing their pierced heart Italian Cardioide German Durchstossenes Herz formation In this formation two groups of aircraft create a heart shape in front of the audience along the runway In the completion of the lower tip of the heart the two groups pass each other parallel to the runway The heart is then pierced by a lone aircraft flying in the direction of spectators The crash EditThis section does not cite any sources Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed August 2019 Learn how and when to remove this template message The mid air collision took place as the two heart forming groups passed each other and the heart piercing aircraft hit them The piercing aircraft crashed onto the runway and consequently both the fuselage and resulting fireball of aviation fuel tumbled into the spectator area hitting the crowd and coming to rest against a refrigerated trailer being used to dispense ice cream to the various vendor booths in the area At the same time one of the damaged aircraft from the heart forming group crashed into the emergency medical evacuation UH 60 Black Hawk helicopter injuring the helicopter s pilot Captain Kim Strader He died 20 days later on Saturday 17 September 1988 at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from burns he suffered in the accident The pilot of the aircraft that hit the helicopter ejected but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened The third aircraft disintegrated in the collision and parts of it were strewn along the runway After the crash the remaining aircraft regrouped and landed at Sembach Air Base The flight paths of the Frecce Tricolori aircraftEmergency response EditScope Edit Of the 31 people who died on impact 28 had been hit by debris in the form of airplane parts concertina wire and items on the ground 3 Sixteen of the fatalities occurred in the days and weeks after the disaster due to severe burns the last was the burned and injured helicopter pilot 4 About 500 people had to seek hospital treatment following the event citation needed and over 600 people reported to the clinic that afternoon to donate blood citation needed Criticism Edit The disaster revealed serious shortcomings in the handling of large scale medical emergencies by German civil and American military authorities US military personnel did not immediately allow German ambulances onto the base and the rescue work was generally hampered by a lack of efficiency and coordination 5 The rescue coordination center in Kaiserslautern was unaware of the disaster s scale as much as an hour after it occurred even though several German medevac helicopters and ambulances had already arrived on site and left with patients American helicopters and ambulances provided the quickest and largest means of evacuating burn victims but lacked sufficient capacities for treating them or had difficulty finding them Further confusion was added by the American military s usage of different standards for intravenous catheters from German paramedics A single standard was codified in 1995 and updated with a newer version in 2013 6 Actions Edit A crisis counseling center was immediately established at the nearby Southside Base Chapel and remained open throughout the week Base mental health professionals provided group and individual counseling in the following weeks and they surveyed the response workers two months following the tragedy and again six months after the disaster to gauge recovery 7 Timeline Edit All times in this article are Central European Summer Time CEST UTC 2 Time Details 8 15 40 Take off of the Frecce Tricolori15 44 Collision15 46 Fire fighters arrive15 48 First American ambulance arrives15 51 First American ambulance helicopter arrives15 52 Second American ambulance helicopter arrives15 54 First American ambulance helicopter takes off16 10 German ambulance helicopter Christoph 5 from Ludwigshafen arrives16 11 German ambulance helicopter Christoph 16 from Saarbrucken arrives16 13 10 American and German ambulances arrive16 28 About 10 15 ambulances arrive Eight medical helicopters US Air Force ADAC SAR at the scene16 33 First medical helicopter of the Rettungsflugwacht arrives16 35 Doctor on emergency call over the radio We are searching for burnt patients that are pulled and transported unaided away from us by the Americans They told us nobody from them are here no more Not all the injured people are transported away by helicopter or ambulance There is total chaos around us and some of the injured are even transported on pickup trucks that are not leaving on emergency exit they are driving beside the drifting visitors It was a terrible sight to see people with burnt clothes and sagging burnt skin squirming with pain of transfixed and shocked with pain clarification needed on these vehicles 16 40 First low platform trailer for transport of the dead bodies arrives16 45 Second low platform trailer for transport of the dead bodies arrives16 47 At that time the German headquarters for emergencies had no clue of the dimensions obvious by the radio communication Yes and that is the problem We don t know yet what had happened how many injuries and what else The leading emergency medical did not send any feedback yet He wants to have a synoptic view first 17 00 At that time several medics arrive with helicopters Later they said At the time we arrived shortly after 5 00 there were no injured people no more We could see that the last badly injured people were loaded into American helicopters We could see some pickup trucks with injured people transporting them away It was not possible to find an officer in charge a director of operations or even a contact person so we got to the Johannis hospital in Landstuhl by own initiative Asking several action forces paramedics police officers nobody could name a director of operations I was asking for a managing paramedic of the operation to coordinate the evacuation But there was none 18 05 An ambulance helicopter arrives at the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center The paramedic said later We found a large number of severely burnt badly injured people absolutely unaided When I arrived in Landstuhl severely burnt people partly lay on wooden planks and no paramedics were there After I aided an injured person and left her with a hospital nurse that attended us at the flight I was treating several injured people at the helicopter landing zone at the military hospital and did not see even one American medic there 18 20 Dead bodies are transported away from the scene with the two platform trucks18 30 A bus full of injured people arrives in Ludwigshafen 80 km away A paramedic later said 5 severely burnt people were inside the bus There was no paramedic attending this transport Just a non German speaking driver unfamiliar with the area on an odyssey through the town until he was able to find the hospital A map of the airshow facilities and accident detailsInvestigation EditThis section needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed August 2011 Learn how and when to remove this template message Several different video recordings of the accident were made They show that the piercing aircraft Pony 10 came in too low and too fast at the crossing point with the other two groups five aircraft on the left and four on the right as they completed the heart shaped figure Lead pilot Lieutenant Colonel Ivo Nutarelli flying Pony 10 was unable to correct his altitude or lower his speed and collided with the leading airplane Pony 1 piloted by Lt Col Mario Naldini of the left formation inside the figure destroying the plane s tail section with the front of his aircraft citation needed Pony 1 then spiralled out of control hitting the plane on its lower left Pony 2 piloted by Captain Giorgio Alessio Lt Col Naldini ejected but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened His plane crashed onto a taxiway near the runway destroying a medevac helicopter and fatally injuring its pilot Captain Kim Strader Pony 2 the third plane involved in the disaster was severely damaged from the impact with Pony 1 and crashed beside the runway exploding in a fireball Its pilot Captain Alessio died on impact Pony 10 the aircraft that started the crash continued on a ballistic trajectory across the runway completely out of control and in flames its forward section destroyed by the impact with Pony 1 The plane hit the ground ahead of the spectator stands exploding in a fireball and destroying a police vehicle parked inside the concertina wire fence that defined the active runway area The plane continued cartwheeling for a distance before picking up the three strand concertina wire fence crossing an emergency access road slamming into the crowd and hitting a parked ice cream van The area of the crash being centered on the flightline and as close to the airshow as civilian spectators could get had been considered the best seats in the house and was densely packed The entire incident from the collision of the first two planes to the crash into the crowd took less than seven seconds leaving almost no time for spectators to escape The low altitude of the maneuver 45 meters above the crowd also contributed to the short time frame An examination of photos and footage from the disaster showed that Pony 10 s landing gear came down at some point it has been suggested that this could have been lowered intentionally as a last second effort by Lt Col Nutarelli to slow his plane down and avoid the impact but there is no substantial evidence pointing to this the undercarriage could have been lowered by a number of factors In April 1991 Werner Reith a German journalist from the newspaper Die Tageszeitung suggested in an article that the Ramstein disaster could have been caused by some sudden technical problem or even sabotage in Nutarelli s plane No supporting evidence could be collected Reith pointed out that Lt Col Nutarelli and Lt Col Naldini were supposed to know details about another air disaster the 1980 Ustica massacre citing Italian press sources 9 Judge Rosario Priore who was investigating the case at the time found that they were performing training flights nearby minutes before the Ustica incident but he definitely rejected their deaths as sabotage References in popular culture Edit The airshow disaster memorial with the names of the victims In gamesA similar disaster is portrayed in the German made strategy PC game Emergency Fighters for Life which is Mission 22In literatureBoth Ramstein Air Force Base and the Ramstein air disaster figure as plot points in Donna Leon s second Guido Brunetti novel Death in a Strange Country 1993 In musicThe Neue Deutsche Harte band Rammstein was named after this catastrophe The second M was initially added by mistake but the band eventually embraced the misspelling as its literal translation is Ramming Stone 10 Rammstein s self titled song on the album Herzeleid 1995 is also a reference to the event 11 DJ and record producer Boris Brejcha was a 6 year old in the crowd and was badly burned by the flames He describes his style as high tech minimal as it reflects his subsequent isolation using the Venetian Carnival mask as his logo American Indie band Guided by Voices released the album Same Place the Fly Got Smashed in which the first track is called Airshow 88 in possible reference to the disaster In televisionThe disaster was featured on the 22 February 2008 episode of Shockwave on The History Channel and the December 10 2000 episode of World s Most Amazing Videos as well as an episode of Real TV See also Edit1990 Italian Air Force MB 326 crashReferences Edit 1988 Ramstein air crash stirs memories Archived 2011 08 26 at the Wayback Machine www stripes com 4 held over worst air show crash Archived from the original on 2013 04 03 Retrieved 2011 03 24 Ramstein survivor support group Ramstein Katastrophe SL Army officer burned in air show crash dies Deseret News Ramstein Air Show Disaster Kills 70 Injures Hundreds Wired August 2009 ISO 10555 1 2013 Intravascular catheters Sterile and single use catheters Part 1 General requirements Archived from the original on 2016 06 17 Retrieved 2013 10 07 Ursano Robert J M D Editor amp Fullerton Carol S Editor amp Wright Kathy M Editor amp McCarroll James E Editor Trauma Disasters and Recovery Department of Military Psychiatry et al p 12ff Archived from the original on October 9 2012 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint uses authors parameter link Katastrophen Nachsorge Am Beispiel der Aufarbeitung der Flugkatastrophe von Ramstein 1988 Hartmut Jatzko Sybille Jatzko Heiner Seidlitz Verlag Stumpf amp Kossendey 2 Auflage 2001 ISBN 3 932750 54 3 Reith Werner 20 April 1991 Tod in Ramstein Spur in Italien Die Tageszeitung Retrieved 17 November 2022 Galenza Havemeister 2003 Feeling B Mix mir einen Drink Berlin Schwarzkopf amp Schwarzkopf p 262 FAQ Herzeleid Archived from the original on 2017 12 07 Retrieved 2019 01 23 Quote from MTV interview External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ramstein air show disaster Le crash de Ramstein in French extensive photo gallery Robert Stetter de Photo gallery of the incident West Germany Hellfire from The Heavens Time magazine article from 12 September 1988 Airliners net Marc Heesters photograph of the incident Ramstein The air show catastrophe and its aftermath Same description in German Information about 2008 documentary a WDR and SWR co production Complete aerobatic maneuver including crash analysis video Documentazione tecnico formale relativa all incidente in Italian Official report of the Italian Air Force Ramstein 1988 Death falling from the clear blue sky Comprehensive report by Austrian Aviation Magazine AustrianWings on 30th anniversary of the tragedy archived Portals West Germany Aviation 1980s Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Ramstein air show disaster amp oldid 1125087745, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
