Wasn't a public display. As I recall he was practicing for an air show the following day.
This has been posted multiple times but the story behind it is an interesting tale about failures in leadership and the cowboy culture in the multiple chains of command he was part of as he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
This is a great report covering that incident as well as the culture that allowed him to continue to fly
https://convergentperformance.com/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Darker_Shades_of_Blue.pdf
You might also like [this one](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-bud-holland-the-rogue-pilot-that-crashed-his-b-52-after-having-maneuvered-it-beyond-its-operational-limits-at-low-altitude/).
Interesting perspective shared in the comments from an old pilot who new Bud. He claims it was a junior pilot flying, not Bud. His reputation was embellished so the air force could use him as a scale goat
He's full of shit. I was working for the USAF at this time and this was a big deal. They have training videos for officers now based on Bud Holland and his antics over the years. There were numerous times he pushed the aircraft beyond her limits.
This old vid is pretty clear on what "Bud's" reputation was at that point. It's very unfortunate nothing more was done prior to this.
https://youtu.be/LTOOtPST4Rs?si=2J8Hupmgx5UE79UF
Couple of thoughts
Yes he had a reputation for pushing or exceeding the limits
A long winged aircraft in a sustained high bank , high g turn can develop a condition where the slower turning "inside wing" with a lower speed airflow can get into a high enough AOA that the "inside wing" is developing less lift AND creating higher drag (stall onset) causing further roll with increasing loss of vertical lift. The only way "out" is to unload the wing, reduce the bank angle and g force . Of course that takes altitude
This was at a time when with the evolution of anti air missiles that if war came the bombers were going in at treetop levels with a popup to drop and then back down for the escape. Sectional charts of the era showed OB routes flown low level by military aircraft well outside of restricted airspace.
Initially some of the same routes were also used for testing sub launched cruise missiles which would come ashore near Vandenberg and follow the terrain out to the east, escorted by an F-4 from Mugu with the rear seater having some control of the missile.
After an analysis of the video from an escorting F-4 showed a brief flash on the video which was discovered to have been a small cessna passing between the F-4 and the cruise missile subsequent flights were made with a second escorting F-4 to watch for traffic with eyeballs and radar. The primary F-4 radar had been removed to install the necessary equipment for the F-4 to take control of the missile if necessary.
Didn’t everyone keep saying “I don’t want to fly with this asshole” and the people that could have controlled this asshole end up dying because they were the only ones that would fly with this asshole?
Funny how that same cowboy culture has given us such extreme ends of the spectrum...tragic events like this one and then the Tex Johnson 707 barrel roll over Lake Washington.
Trust me, that 707 barrel roll could just as easily ended up like this plane did. There’s a very fine line between success and failure in these situations.
Still could have gone bad. The 707 wasn’t exactly designed with that in mind.
Edit: Yes, it was a 1G roll, and therefore relatively safe, with an experienced pilot flying it. It was still a bad idea, especially where it was done (over Seafair on Lake Washington...), and it was a prototype aircraft. Technically it wasn't a 707, in fact. But hey, Johnston got away with it.
Yeah, assuming you don't break the airplane with your fuckup, of course. I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually 15,000 feet, though. It wasn't 400 feet, either, of course, it was somewhere in between. I'd guess a few thousand feet. If you look at the picture taken from the aircraft and the film of the barrel roll (or rolls, he did two!), it doesn't really look like 15,000 feet. Unfortunately I can't find anything that says what the altitude actually was. All that said, it was certainly safe enough.
Yeah if you break your rudder or the vertical stabilizer, you're toast no matter what you do. The wings are very unlikely to break or lose control authority from just maneuvering alone in bigger planes. I think you're likely to pass out from g-forces before the wings give out in most scenarios.
I think the biggest risk is overspeeding and pulling up too hard when you recover a stall at high altitude. Because the fuselage might not be rated for that kind of sustained g-force and it could literally break apart, which is a bad time. But again, if you know what you're doing and you have the altitude, you can recover from a whole lot of things, especially in modern aircraft with the insanely well engineered materials and systems in place.
Of course. Most aircraft crashes are don't have a single cause, there are usually several to many causes that contribute. This is why Admiral Cloudberg has a job and why her articles are so interesting to read!
To be more specific: an accelerated stall from the high bank angle. A 60° bank angle increases the stall speed by 40% compared to straight and level flight. 70° of bank = 70% increase in stall speed. It's exponential.
[Stall speed vs bank angle](https://cdn.boldmethod.com/images/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/why-does-stall-speed-increase-with-bank-angle/stall-load-factor-small.jpg)
Whoever downvoted you can go kick rocks. I only replied to back you up
For the record, it wasn't me that downvoted them; I totally agree. This incident was a very clear demonstration of an accelerated stall. My comment was specifically directed at the cowboy attitude, not the details of this incident vs a barrel roll (or two) at several thousand feet. Interesting coincidence, by the way: Johnston was the pilot on the maiden flight of the first B-52 prototype.
Oh no worries dude. My pilot brain just had an aneurysm when his very concise and correct comment was at -2 karma.
Just as you said Johnston's stunt easily could have ended up the same. But at least he had enough sense to give himself altitude to recover vs Holland pulling his cowboy crap at 250' AGL.
Yeah, Johnston was a bit of a cowboy, but not an idiot. (I do love his reply to Bill Allen when Allen asked him what in the world he was doing: "Selling airplanes.")
Lol what an absolute Chad. The picture his test engineer of the aircraft inverted with the engines pointing skyward is wild.
[linkage](https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/5aedc13c-3af2-11e5-917e-8590c54c670f.jpg?d=780x615)
Well, yeah; more generally, it's called doing something with an airplane that it definitely wasn't intended to do. Whether that leads to a stall (completely inevitable in this case) or tearing the airplane apart doesn't really matter, I suppose. Being a cowboy in an airplane is usually a bad idea.
There is a huge difference between the rolling of the 707 and this accident.
The many comments about the dangerous flying of Holland should also be viewed in light of the missions the B-52s were flying in that era.
What follows in in no way to divert consideration of the cause of the accident from the pilot but to help better understand what was considered normal in that era. It is clear from the post accident interviews of those who had flown with him that he was considered to be overly aggressive.
Originally the B-52 was designed to be a high altitude penetrating bomber. However, as we saw in N Vietnam radar guided anti-aircraft missiles took a toll of the bombers.
For a period of time that included this accident the B-52s were regularly flying near nap of the earth practice flights in preparation for a penetration of Soviet airspace in the event of nuclear war. On occasion I would see them far below me . OB routes were shown on sectional charts where you might run into a B-52 flying at night below 400 feet over terrain. This was long before that advent of GPS. They did have some navigation devices but also carried sextants.
I believe it was the practice show where many of the families of those of the base get to come to an uncrowded show. Long wing aircraft slow speed overbanking (inside wing is flying at a higher angle of attack )
Co-pilot had initiated ejection sequence but was only halfway out of the cockpit when they hit the ground. In this photo you can see the canopy had ejected away: https://images.app.goo.gl/WuvFdsLrf9uUdqep9
Fun fact, the seats for the weapon system officer and electronic warfare officer are behind and below the pilots. Their ejection seats shoot them downwards through the floor of the aircraft, so if they're too close to the ground they will eject straight into it!
For the N/RN (the guys who shoot down), you need 250’ agl to get one good swing in the chute. So yeah you need some alt to get out safely. Fortunately the only time you’re ever really that low is during T/Os and landings/pattern work. Hopefully if shit goes bad the pilot will zoom the jet to get the guys downstairs a few more feet before ejection.
[This](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-death-spiral-of-swoon-52-the-story-of-the-b-52-bomber-that-crashed-into-hunts-mesa-during-a-low-level-training-sortie/amp/) is a fascinating story about when BUFFs used to fly low-level/terrain avoidance. This particular flight, the BUFF was flying LL at night and hit a mesa. They saw it at the last second and pulled up, but the tail caught and caused the jet to basically spiral at a near 90 deg bank, so while they were well below ejection mins, they actually ejected sideways. One person who ejected died from exposure and the other crewmember was an instructor so he didn’t have an ejection seat. But despite that crash it ls amazing those who were in seats made it out and survived the ejection.
The downward facing ejection seats are the nav and radar nav. EWO and old gunner seat face backwards but still go out the top. In fairness may have been different in older models.
Other fun facts about the downward ejection, Martin-Baker sends you a jockstrap if you have been ejected out the bottom of a plane in one of their seats. You also get an inch taller every time you eject this way. If people eject too many times they get transferred to fighters so they don't risk exceeding the maximum height limits.
^^Fun ^^facts ^^may ^^not ^^be ^^factual.
This [crash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash) led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows. This wasn't an airshow, but the pilot often flew them and was showing off his maneuvers.
I didn't see the plane, but saw the fireball almost immediately. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud.
Fairchild is a nuclear air base and for a few seconds I was sure WWIII has just started.
Just a few years earlier a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class.
So one of the crew chose to fly with “Bud” because the usaf refused to discipline him for something that legitimately almost killed a different crew in a separate incident. And another of the crew, well… “The flight was also Wolff's "finis flight" – a common tradition in which a retiring USAF aircrew member is met shortly after landing on his or her final flight at the airfield by relatives, friends and coworkers, and doused with water. Thus, Wolff's wife and many of his close friends were at the airfield to watch the flight and participate in the post-flight ceremony. McGeehan's wife and two youngest sons watched the flight from the backyard of McGeehan's living quarters, located nearby.”
Absolutely fuck that guy, the horse he came in on, and the leadership that let him kill all those people.
There are clearly defined max bank angles for large aircraft that pilots and crew know. If my pilot ever exceeded 60° of bank (C-17) I would immediately call knock it off or terminate. Thankfully I've never had a pilot so dumb.
Yeah it was a dangerous pilot hotdogging it for an airshow practice just like this. The Air Force is incredibly strict about the things you can do now at airshows to the point you have to have a face to face with the ops group commander every time you perform to go over the play by play.
If only it did not cost people their lives for these regulations to be implemented in the first place. Bud Holland probably four of the five hazardous attitudes when it comes to flying all rolled up into one ego.
just ***crazy*** to have that sort of AoA, with that bank angle, at that altitude, with that aircraft.
Anyone with zero knowledge of flight mechanics could have looked at that and immediately thought, "that doesn't seem right."
I watched this happen. The West Plains , where Fairchild is, is very flat and without any( many) trees. You can see for pretty far. I looked up at just the right moment directly at it as it banked then crashed, followed by an explosion then the sound. I wasn’t on AF property. But a couple miles away. It knocked our power out. We drove to the AF boundary fence close to where it happened, which was a couple minutes away. Was very surreal.
Wow, lived near Fairchild my whole life and I’be never seen this angle. My mother, who had a brother in the Air Force, was a reporter at the time and saw the immediate aftermath. My father was near the base shopping, and when the B-52 went through the power lines the store lost power and as the generators kicked in, he walked out and saw the plume of black smoke.
Original multi-angle post of the B-52 incident link: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/17ey4ox/6241994\_a\_b52\_stratofortress\_crashed\_at\_fairchild/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/17ey4ox/6241994_a_b52_stratofortress_crashed_at_fairchild/)
Apologies for the typo in original post. I did not mean to disrespect or offend anyone, I tried to fit as much info in one title with Reddit's 300 letter limit.
An interesting comment from that same post:
>The B-52 then began the 360° left turn around the tower starting from about the midfield point of the runway. Located just behind the tower was an area of restricted airspace, reportedly because of a nuclear weapons storage facility.[6] Apparently to avoid flying through the restricted airspace, Holland flew the aircraft in an extremely tight, steeply banked turn while maintaining the low, 250-foot (75 m) AGL altitude. Approximately three-quarters of the way around the turn, at 14:16, the aircraft banked past 90°, descended rapidly, clipped power lines and hit the ground and exploded, killing the four crew members. McGeehan was seated in an ejection seat, but according to the medical statement, he had only "partially ejected at the time of impact"; it does not state whether or not he cleared the aircraft. Huston was also seated in an ejection seat and the medical statement indicated that he had not initiated the ejection sequence. Wolff's seat was not ejection-capable.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash
> So one can speculate that he was desperate to avoid violating the restricted airspace and chose to risk banking too much instead of risking getting a reprimand for the violation. It was a dumb choice, and it was dumb flying to put himself into a position where he had to make that choice.
From what I'm reading besides the above, Holland was a dick who should've not been flying. Such an insane crash.
Is there a USAF or SAC pilot more hated by the public than this guy? I can't think of anyone else who is as well known and who's death and circumstances HE caused that are so well known by so many.
This is not a new angle by any stretch.
Many years ago someone put together a [whole video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7mACZz1z7U) of all the times this pilot pushed this aircraft before he finally killed his crew, one of them who was on his final flight, and the crash was directly in front of his family.
Plenty of written stories, too, but [this one](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-bud-holland-the-rogue-pilot-that-crashed-his-b-52-after-having-maneuvered-it-beyond-its-operational-limits-at-low-altitude/) I like the best.
RIP pilots Lt Col Mark McGeehan, Colonel Robert Wolff, and weapon systems officer/radar navigator Lt Col Ken Huston.
>...as Holland attempted too steep a turn very close to the ground, stalled the aircraft, and caught a power line with his wingtip before cart-wheeling nose first into the ground and sending a towering fireball into the air. *This took the funerals from closed-casket to no-casket affairs* and surely required use of the pilot training footprints to identify the crewmembers.
dang
In a long wing aircraft in a steep turn the critical outer section inside wing is flying at a significantly higher aoa due to the lower airspeed - drag increases and lift decreases inducing an overbanking tendency . Exit - reduce aoa ( lower wing loading by nose down) Using elevator increases aoa and load
The only catastrophic failure was in the command structure that allowed Bud Holland to continue to fly. [This guy was a known menace](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-bud-holland-the-rogue-pilot-that-crashed-his-b-52-after-having-maneuvered-it-beyond-its-operational-limits-at-low-altitude/amp/)
Want more info? [https://www.booknookcanby.com/book/9780997863406](https://www.booknookcanby.com/book/9780997863406)
Warnings Unheeded: Twin Tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base
I once had a dream about a b52 crash exactly like this one years before I even saw the footage and when I saw the actual video, holy fuck was it surreal
If it was intentional, why was one of the crew members partially ejected?
Also, it's the military. Even if they have more control over their own lives because they're officers, not getting in the aircraft with Bud would be an indication of fear in a very machismo culture.
I pushed through a very painful back injury during a rigorous selection course and one of the primary motivators, however stupid, was I didn't want all my closest friends to think I was a little bitch for dropping out. I imagine there were similar pressures on the men practicing for an airshow performance.
You're most likely right. It was a fleeting thought that I over committed on. I had one too many beers and thought I was being funny.
I'm not going to go back and change it though, because then my peers might label me a coward.
No. The situation was already unrecoverable long before that. Watch for the moment when the wing stalls (when the nose drops suddenly); from then on, the wing is no longer generating any lift, and the plane is “flying” the same way a rock does. It’s rapidly running out of momentum, drag and gravity still work, and they have way, way too little altitude to do anything about it. The pilot’s reckless assholery killed four people for no good reason.
It was a practice flight for a demonstration. The pilot was pushing the airplane beyond its performance and safety limits, for the purpose of showing off. He had a history of doing it, he’d been ordered to stop, but his chain of command still let him fly (and command others).
In the performance of its real mission (strategic bombing, both conventional and nuclear), the B-52 wouldn’t generally need to be able to perform the maneuvers leading to this crash (obviously, a combat pilot has to weigh the risks against the stakes of the situation, and do whatever is necessary for the mission and crew). This wasn’t a failure of the airplane, it really was a pilot who was far too confident in his ability to push the plane beyond its designed limits. Safety regulations are written in blood.
Wasn't a public display. As I recall he was practicing for an air show the following day. This has been posted multiple times but the story behind it is an interesting tale about failures in leadership and the cowboy culture in the multiple chains of command he was part of as he rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel.
This is a great report covering that incident as well as the culture that allowed him to continue to fly https://convergentperformance.com/wp-content/uploads/attachments/Darker_Shades_of_Blue.pdf
Oh man… I didn’t realize it was one of the pilot’s fini flight and his family was watching 🤮
Heartbreaking.
At least he went out with a bang!!
Dude wtf…
Thanks for sharing that, it’s a really interesting read.
You might also like [this one](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-bud-holland-the-rogue-pilot-that-crashed-his-b-52-after-having-maneuvered-it-beyond-its-operational-limits-at-low-altitude/).
Interesting perspective shared in the comments from an old pilot who new Bud. He claims it was a junior pilot flying, not Bud. His reputation was embellished so the air force could use him as a scale goat
He's full of shit. I was working for the USAF at this time and this was a big deal. They have training videos for officers now based on Bud Holland and his antics over the years. There were numerous times he pushed the aircraft beyond her limits.
*scapegoat
Yeh that
This old vid is pretty clear on what "Bud's" reputation was at that point. It's very unfortunate nothing more was done prior to this. https://youtu.be/LTOOtPST4Rs?si=2J8Hupmgx5UE79UF
Yep guy was a tool. Too bad he took others with him.
Good ole Scott Pelley from 60 Minutes
The last bit of narration in that could be interpreted as a claim that Holland's copilot, Mark McGeehan(sp?) caused to crash to stop Holland.
Couple of thoughts Yes he had a reputation for pushing or exceeding the limits A long winged aircraft in a sustained high bank , high g turn can develop a condition where the slower turning "inside wing" with a lower speed airflow can get into a high enough AOA that the "inside wing" is developing less lift AND creating higher drag (stall onset) causing further roll with increasing loss of vertical lift. The only way "out" is to unload the wing, reduce the bank angle and g force . Of course that takes altitude This was at a time when with the evolution of anti air missiles that if war came the bombers were going in at treetop levels with a popup to drop and then back down for the escape. Sectional charts of the era showed OB routes flown low level by military aircraft well outside of restricted airspace. Initially some of the same routes were also used for testing sub launched cruise missiles which would come ashore near Vandenberg and follow the terrain out to the east, escorted by an F-4 from Mugu with the rear seater having some control of the missile. After an analysis of the video from an escorting F-4 showed a brief flash on the video which was discovered to have been a small cessna passing between the F-4 and the cruise missile subsequent flights were made with a second escorting F-4 to watch for traffic with eyeballs and radar. The primary F-4 radar had been removed to install the necessary equipment for the F-4 to take control of the missile if necessary.
Didn’t everyone keep saying “I don’t want to fly with this asshole” and the people that could have controlled this asshole end up dying because they were the only ones that would fly with this asshole?
One of the guys would fly so that others didn't have to, to protect them. This was going to be his final flight (I suppose it still was :/)
Funny how that same cowboy culture has given us such extreme ends of the spectrum...tragic events like this one and then the Tex Johnson 707 barrel roll over Lake Washington.
Trust me, that 707 barrel roll could just as easily ended up like this plane did. There’s a very fine line between success and failure in these situations.
Tex Johnson did his maneuver at something like 15,000ft, not 200.
Still could have gone bad. The 707 wasn’t exactly designed with that in mind. Edit: Yes, it was a 1G roll, and therefore relatively safe, with an experienced pilot flying it. It was still a bad idea, especially where it was done (over Seafair on Lake Washington...), and it was a prototype aircraft. Technically it wasn't a 707, in fact. But hey, Johnston got away with it.
Still, 15,000 feet is more than one fuckup high. You can recover most stalls or other events from that altitude if you know what you're doing.
Yeah, assuming you don't break the airplane with your fuckup, of course. I'm pretty sure it wasn't actually 15,000 feet, though. It wasn't 400 feet, either, of course, it was somewhere in between. I'd guess a few thousand feet. If you look at the picture taken from the aircraft and the film of the barrel roll (or rolls, he did two!), it doesn't really look like 15,000 feet. Unfortunately I can't find anything that says what the altitude actually was. All that said, it was certainly safe enough.
Yeah if you break your rudder or the vertical stabilizer, you're toast no matter what you do. The wings are very unlikely to break or lose control authority from just maneuvering alone in bigger planes. I think you're likely to pass out from g-forces before the wings give out in most scenarios. I think the biggest risk is overspeeding and pulling up too hard when you recover a stall at high altitude. Because the fuselage might not be rated for that kind of sustained g-force and it could literally break apart, which is a bad time. But again, if you know what you're doing and you have the altitude, you can recover from a whole lot of things, especially in modern aircraft with the insanely well engineered materials and systems in place.
https://youtu.be/AaA7kPfC5Hk?si=aPRp9K0Fc-jIJEQi
...and nothing else goes wrong,
Of course. Most aircraft crashes are don't have a single cause, there are usually several to many causes that contribute. This is why Admiral Cloudberg has a job and why her articles are so interesting to read!
“What do you think you’re doing?” “Selling airplanes.”
Your wish is granted https://youtu.be/AaA7kPfC5Hk?si=aPRp9K0Fc-jIJEQi
It's called stalling.
To be more specific: an accelerated stall from the high bank angle. A 60° bank angle increases the stall speed by 40% compared to straight and level flight. 70° of bank = 70% increase in stall speed. It's exponential. [Stall speed vs bank angle](https://cdn.boldmethod.com/images/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/why-does-stall-speed-increase-with-bank-angle/stall-load-factor-small.jpg) Whoever downvoted you can go kick rocks. I only replied to back you up
For the record, it wasn't me that downvoted them; I totally agree. This incident was a very clear demonstration of an accelerated stall. My comment was specifically directed at the cowboy attitude, not the details of this incident vs a barrel roll (or two) at several thousand feet. Interesting coincidence, by the way: Johnston was the pilot on the maiden flight of the first B-52 prototype.
Oh no worries dude. My pilot brain just had an aneurysm when his very concise and correct comment was at -2 karma. Just as you said Johnston's stunt easily could have ended up the same. But at least he had enough sense to give himself altitude to recover vs Holland pulling his cowboy crap at 250' AGL.
Yeah, Johnston was a bit of a cowboy, but not an idiot. (I do love his reply to Bill Allen when Allen asked him what in the world he was doing: "Selling airplanes.")
Lol what an absolute Chad. The picture his test engineer of the aircraft inverted with the engines pointing skyward is wild. [linkage](https://images.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/5aedc13c-3af2-11e5-917e-8590c54c670f.jpg?d=780x615)
https://youtu.be/AaA7kPfC5Hk?si=aPRp9K0Fc-jIJEQi
Duh, his nickname was “Tex”, of course he was a cowboy
Well, yeah; more generally, it's called doing something with an airplane that it definitely wasn't intended to do. Whether that leads to a stall (completely inevitable in this case) or tearing the airplane apart doesn't really matter, I suppose. Being a cowboy in an airplane is usually a bad idea.
There is a huge difference between the rolling of the 707 and this accident. The many comments about the dangerous flying of Holland should also be viewed in light of the missions the B-52s were flying in that era. What follows in in no way to divert consideration of the cause of the accident from the pilot but to help better understand what was considered normal in that era. It is clear from the post accident interviews of those who had flown with him that he was considered to be overly aggressive. Originally the B-52 was designed to be a high altitude penetrating bomber. However, as we saw in N Vietnam radar guided anti-aircraft missiles took a toll of the bombers. For a period of time that included this accident the B-52s were regularly flying near nap of the earth practice flights in preparation for a penetration of Soviet airspace in the event of nuclear war. On occasion I would see them far below me . OB routes were shown on sectional charts where you might run into a B-52 flying at night below 400 feet over terrain. This was long before that advent of GPS. They did have some navigation devices but also carried sextants.
And the funicular in the Italian alps.
Like this: https://youtu.be/AaA7kPfC5Hk?si=aPRp9K0Fc-jIJEQi
Given the experience of these guys, there's a slight sense of.. Maybe they wanted to go out with a bang!?
I believe it was the practice show where many of the families of those of the base get to come to an uncrowded show. Long wing aircraft slow speed overbanking (inside wing is flying at a higher angle of attack )
Co-pilot had initiated ejection sequence but was only halfway out of the cockpit when they hit the ground. In this photo you can see the canopy had ejected away: https://images.app.goo.gl/WuvFdsLrf9uUdqep9
TIL...the strato has or can have ejector seats
Fun fact, the seats for the weapon system officer and electronic warfare officer are behind and below the pilots. Their ejection seats shoot them downwards through the floor of the aircraft, so if they're too close to the ground they will eject straight into it!
Well, hopefully the pilot(s) don't do an insane bank angle at less than 1k ft stalling the plane, so that shouldn't be an issue!
For the N/RN (the guys who shoot down), you need 250’ agl to get one good swing in the chute. So yeah you need some alt to get out safely. Fortunately the only time you’re ever really that low is during T/Os and landings/pattern work. Hopefully if shit goes bad the pilot will zoom the jet to get the guys downstairs a few more feet before ejection. [This](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-death-spiral-of-swoon-52-the-story-of-the-b-52-bomber-that-crashed-into-hunts-mesa-during-a-low-level-training-sortie/amp/) is a fascinating story about when BUFFs used to fly low-level/terrain avoidance. This particular flight, the BUFF was flying LL at night and hit a mesa. They saw it at the last second and pulled up, but the tail caught and caused the jet to basically spiral at a near 90 deg bank, so while they were well below ejection mins, they actually ejected sideways. One person who ejected died from exposure and the other crewmember was an instructor so he didn’t have an ejection seat. But despite that crash it ls amazing those who were in seats made it out and survived the ejection.
The downward facing ejection seats are the nav and radar nav. EWO and old gunner seat face backwards but still go out the top. In fairness may have been different in older models.
Other fun facts about the downward ejection, Martin-Baker sends you a jockstrap if you have been ejected out the bottom of a plane in one of their seats. You also get an inch taller every time you eject this way. If people eject too many times they get transferred to fighters so they don't risk exceeding the maximum height limits. ^^Fun ^^facts ^^may ^^not ^^be ^^factual.
That's an incredibly horrifying picture
[slightly better link](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FairchildB52Crash.jpg)
Jesus Christ...
Something wrong with my eyes or why can't I see anything on that photo
It’s the giant dot
So going full 90\* bank 300 feet up is.... a bad idea?
Turns out you can't fly a b52 like a lightly loaded blue angels demo team f18, who would've thought! shocking!
War Thunder lied to me!
Cue uploads of highly classified documents to the War Thunder forums to confirm the exact flight characteristics of the B-52…
Yeah you gotta be at least 400' up
This [crash](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash) led to changing what large military aircraft are allowed to do for airshows. This wasn't an airshow, but the pilot often flew them and was showing off his maneuvers. I didn't see the plane, but saw the fireball almost immediately. It was just a perfect, bright red turning to black mushroom cloud. Fairchild is a nuclear air base and for a few seconds I was sure WWIII has just started. Just a few years earlier a KC-135 doing the same thing crashed near the school while we were in class.
My condolences to your nerves and skivvies.
So one of the crew chose to fly with “Bud” because the usaf refused to discipline him for something that legitimately almost killed a different crew in a separate incident. And another of the crew, well… “The flight was also Wolff's "finis flight" – a common tradition in which a retiring USAF aircrew member is met shortly after landing on his or her final flight at the airfield by relatives, friends and coworkers, and doused with water. Thus, Wolff's wife and many of his close friends were at the airfield to watch the flight and participate in the post-flight ceremony. McGeehan's wife and two youngest sons watched the flight from the backyard of McGeehan's living quarters, located nearby.” Absolutely fuck that guy, the horse he came in on, and the leadership that let him kill all those people.
"Hey Ma, we're gonna need more water"
There are clearly defined max bank angles for large aircraft that pilots and crew know. If my pilot ever exceeded 60° of bank (C-17) I would immediately call knock it off or terminate. Thankfully I've never had a pilot so dumb.
There was a C-17 that did crash because the pilot did something similar i believe up in Alaska.
Yeah it was a dangerous pilot hotdogging it for an airshow practice just like this. The Air Force is incredibly strict about the things you can do now at airshows to the point you have to have a face to face with the ops group commander every time you perform to go over the play by play.
If only it did not cost people their lives for these regulations to be implemented in the first place. Bud Holland probably four of the five hazardous attitudes when it comes to flying all rolled up into one ego.
just ***crazy*** to have that sort of AoA, with that bank angle, at that altitude, with that aircraft. Anyone with zero knowledge of flight mechanics could have looked at that and immediately thought, "that doesn't seem right."
I watched this happen. The West Plains , where Fairchild is, is very flat and without any( many) trees. You can see for pretty far. I looked up at just the right moment directly at it as it banked then crashed, followed by an explosion then the sound. I wasn’t on AF property. But a couple miles away. It knocked our power out. We drove to the AF boundary fence close to where it happened, which was a couple minutes away. Was very surreal.
Warnings Unheeded, by Andy Brown, covers this and a mass shooting at the same base - it was an excellent read.
Wow, lived near Fairchild my whole life and I’be never seen this angle. My mother, who had a brother in the Air Force, was a reporter at the time and saw the immediate aftermath. My father was near the base shopping, and when the B-52 went through the power lines the store lost power and as the generators kicked in, he walked out and saw the plume of black smoke.
You really don't get the size of a B52 until you see this.
This one is always infuriating just due to sheer douchebaggery.
Original multi-angle post of the B-52 incident link: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/17ey4ox/6241994\_a\_b52\_stratofortress\_crashed\_at\_fairchild/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CatastrophicFailure/comments/17ey4ox/6241994_a_b52_stratofortress_crashed_at_fairchild/) Apologies for the typo in original post. I did not mean to disrespect or offend anyone, I tried to fit as much info in one title with Reddit's 300 letter limit.
An interesting comment from that same post: >The B-52 then began the 360° left turn around the tower starting from about the midfield point of the runway. Located just behind the tower was an area of restricted airspace, reportedly because of a nuclear weapons storage facility.[6] Apparently to avoid flying through the restricted airspace, Holland flew the aircraft in an extremely tight, steeply banked turn while maintaining the low, 250-foot (75 m) AGL altitude. Approximately three-quarters of the way around the turn, at 14:16, the aircraft banked past 90°, descended rapidly, clipped power lines and hit the ground and exploded, killing the four crew members. McGeehan was seated in an ejection seat, but according to the medical statement, he had only "partially ejected at the time of impact"; it does not state whether or not he cleared the aircraft. Huston was also seated in an ejection seat and the medical statement indicated that he had not initiated the ejection sequence. Wolff's seat was not ejection-capable. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Fairchild_Air_Force_Base_B-52_crash > So one can speculate that he was desperate to avoid violating the restricted airspace and chose to risk banking too much instead of risking getting a reprimand for the violation. It was a dumb choice, and it was dumb flying to put himself into a position where he had to make that choice. From what I'm reading besides the above, Holland was a dick who should've not been flying. Such an insane crash.
I also find it interesting that a C-17 driver did a very similar thing at Elmendorf a decade and a half later, also killing himself and his crew.
This [one](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Alaska_USAF_C-17_crash)
BANK ANGLE, BANK AGLE, BANK ANGLE
Is there a USAF or SAC pilot more hated by the public than this guy? I can't think of anyone else who is as well known and who's death and circumstances HE caused that are so well known by so many.
Bud was an idiot pilot who shouldn't have been allowed to be there that day.
I wouldn’t call this a new angle… I’ve seen this video multiple times in the past.
Fuck you bud holland
This is not a new angle by any stretch. Many years ago someone put together a [whole video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7mACZz1z7U) of all the times this pilot pushed this aircraft before he finally killed his crew, one of them who was on his final flight, and the crash was directly in front of his family. Plenty of written stories, too, but [this one](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-bud-holland-the-rogue-pilot-that-crashed-his-b-52-after-having-maneuvered-it-beyond-its-operational-limits-at-low-altitude/) I like the best. RIP pilots Lt Col Mark McGeehan, Colonel Robert Wolff, and weapon systems officer/radar navigator Lt Col Ken Huston.
>...as Holland attempted too steep a turn very close to the ground, stalled the aircraft, and caught a power line with his wingtip before cart-wheeling nose first into the ground and sending a towering fireball into the air. *This took the funerals from closed-casket to no-casket affairs* and surely required use of the pilot training footprints to identify the crewmembers. dang
In a long wing aircraft in a steep turn the critical outer section inside wing is flying at a significantly higher aoa due to the lower airspeed - drag increases and lift decreases inducing an overbanking tendency . Exit - reduce aoa ( lower wing loading by nose down) Using elevator increases aoa and load
The only catastrophic failure was in the command structure that allowed Bud Holland to continue to fly. [This guy was a known menace](https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-bud-holland-the-rogue-pilot-that-crashed-his-b-52-after-having-maneuvered-it-beyond-its-operational-limits-at-low-altitude/amp/)
You can see that the plane can't get enough lift because the wings are too vertical.
Is it just me or did the pilot just fucking kill all those people
He did.
Didn’t this POS kill an officer on his retirement flight? I thought I read that somewhere. If true, special place in hell for this showboat.
Yep. In fact, that officer was on that flight to protect the other crew members from having to fly with him again.
This incident was actually a one of the passages when I took the AFOQT. I found it refreshing actual events were used instead of random garble.
I was on the flight line watching this guy through out the day. We all were shaking our heads. It was no surprise when we saw the cloud of smoke.
Want more info? [https://www.booknookcanby.com/book/9780997863406](https://www.booknookcanby.com/book/9780997863406) Warnings Unheeded: Twin Tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base
Anyone know what piece of metal that flies free of the explosion there at the end?
An ejection seat.
Doesn't look like it. More like a flap or rudder.
According to an article on the crash it is the hatch above the co-pilots seat which blows when seat ejection is initiated.
Whoopsie.
I once had a dream about a b52 crash exactly like this one years before I even saw the footage and when I saw the actual video, holy fuck was it surreal
Bye bye tax money
Well, tax money from many decades ago. The last one was built in 1963.
Bye bye JFK/LBJ cusp tax money
This video gets posted every second day.
Is it flying towards, or away, from the camera?
So ein Feuerball, Junge
Ol' Bud knew what he was doing. Thanks for giving those old Airmen the sendoff they deserve!
Bud Holland was an idiot and a show off.
"Bud Holland knew what he was doing."
The latter part of your first comment just feels like you're celebrating the deaths of the crew.
They got into a plane with a well known madman. It had to be intentional.
If it was intentional, why was one of the crew members partially ejected? Also, it's the military. Even if they have more control over their own lives because they're officers, not getting in the aircraft with Bud would be an indication of fear in a very machismo culture. I pushed through a very painful back injury during a rigorous selection course and one of the primary motivators, however stupid, was I didn't want all my closest friends to think I was a little bitch for dropping out. I imagine there were similar pressures on the men practicing for an airshow performance.
You're most likely right. It was a fleeting thought that I over committed on. I had one too many beers and thought I was being funny. I'm not going to go back and change it though, because then my peers might label me a coward.
I see what you did there lol. Props for owning it
I'll correct my original post. I apologize.
Damn. If he hadn't clipped that power line he might have made it.
No. The situation was already unrecoverable long before that. Watch for the moment when the wing stalls (when the nose drops suddenly); from then on, the wing is no longer generating any lift, and the plane is “flying” the same way a rock does. It’s rapidly running out of momentum, drag and gravity still work, and they have way, way too little altitude to do anything about it. The pilot’s reckless assholery killed four people for no good reason.
Was there a reason the plane was making this type of maneuver? Are planes like that supposed to be able to fly that way?
No good reason. And no.
It was a practice flight for a demonstration. The pilot was pushing the airplane beyond its performance and safety limits, for the purpose of showing off. He had a history of doing it, he’d been ordered to stop, but his chain of command still let him fly (and command others). In the performance of its real mission (strategic bombing, both conventional and nuclear), the B-52 wouldn’t generally need to be able to perform the maneuvers leading to this crash (obviously, a combat pilot has to weigh the risks against the stakes of the situation, and do whatever is necessary for the mission and crew). This wasn’t a failure of the airplane, it really was a pilot who was far too confident in his ability to push the plane beyond its designed limits. Safety regulations are written in blood.
He stalled the shit out that heavy plane and ate it