Accidents and Incidents
On 10 March 1956, four B-47 Stratojets left MacDill Air Force Base in Florida for a non-stop flight to Ben Guerir Air Base in Morocco. Their first aerial refueling was completed without incident. After descending through cloud to begin their second refueling, over the Mediterranean Sea at 14,000 ft, the aircraft manned by Captain Robert H. Hodgin (31, commander), Captain Gordon M. Insley (32, navigator/observer), and 2nd Lt. Ronald L. Kurtz (22, pilot) failed to make contact with the tanker. Neither the aircraft nor its personnel were ever found.
On 9 October 1957, B-47 Stratojet 51-2177A, of the 447th Bomb Squadron, 321st Bomb Wing at Pinecastle Air Force Base suffered wing failure and crashed northwest of Orlando, Florida and west of Winter Park, Florida while taking part in a practice demonstration during the annual Strategic Air Command Bombing Navigation and Reconnaissance Competition at Pinecastle AFB. The wing commander, Colonel Michael Norman Wright McCoy, was killed in the crash. Pinecastle Air Force Base was later renamed McCoy Air Force Base in his honor.
On 12 March 1960, a B-47 Stratojet exploded in mid-air during a training mission over Little Rock, Arkansas, 13 minutes after takeoff. Three of the four crew members on board were killed, along with two civilians on the ground.
On 20 August 1963, a QB-47 veered off course on its landing approach at Eglin Air Force Base and crash landed on a stretch of road that ran parallel to the runway. The QB-47 that crashed was used for Bomarc Missile Program tests, which normally operated from Eglin AFB Auxiliary Field Number Three (Duke Field), approximately 15 miles (24 km) north of the main base. Two cars were crushed by the crash landing, killing two occupants who both worked for the Minnesota Honeywell Corporation at the time, a firm which had just completed flight tests on an inertia guidance sub-system for the Boeing X-20 Dyna-Soar project at the base, and injuring a third. Both vehicles were destroyed by fire.
Read more about this topic: Boeing B-47 Stratojet
Famous quotes containing the words accidents and/or incidents:
“We are the men of intrinsic value, who can strike our fortunes out of ourselves, whose worth is independent of accidents in life, or revolutions in government: we have heads to get money, and hearts to spend it.”
—George Farquhar (1678–1707)
“An element of exaggeration clings to the popular judgment: great vices are made greater, great virtues greater also; interesting incidents are made more interesting, softer legends more soft.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)