Blue Angels and Thunderbirds

Both of them had jet crashes this afternoon.

Blue Angels jet, Thunderbird F-16 crash in separate incidents

http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/02/politics/military-plane-crash/index.html

The fatality is the opposing solo, #6, Jeff Kuss, married with two small children . . . . . damn it.

So sad for our beloved Blues.

Ohhhh, this is SO sad.  I'd been running around all day and hadn't caught any news.   Just awful.   Thank you for posting the info, ppaca and Z-man, though I almost wish I hadn't seen it.    

Here's the PNJ article:  

http://www.pnj.com/story/news/military/2016/06/02/reports-fatality-blue-angels-crash-tenn/85312020/

BBL,   LL

knothead wrote:The fatality is the opposing solo, #6, Jeff Kuss, married with two small children . . . . . damn it.

Blue Angels: Tributes pour in for Capt. Jeff Kuss
[url=http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson /2016/06/02/blue-angels-tributes-pour-captain-jeff-kuss/85318590/]http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/local/davidson%20/2016/06/02/blue-angels-tributes-pour-captain-jeff-kuss/85318590/[/url]


This is a USA Today article from the Nashville Tennessean. The comments below the article seem to imply the pilot may have sacrificed himself to guide his aircraft away from populated areas instead of ejecting to save his skin.



This reminds me of the chicken-shit USAF Captain who in 1996 ejected from his stricken F-16 over a northeast Pensacola neighborhood and took out two houses and a 4-year old boy (he was trying to glide to a dead-stick landing at Pensacola Regional). Two blocks away was about 80 unoccupied acres (currently the site of the Creighton Road Walmart complex) where his jet might have been pointed if he stayed with it for one or two seconds longer.



The USAF came in to investigate, ran roughshod over the stricken families, and later promoted their pilot to Major. I was waiting for some retired aviators in the community to raise the bullshit flag over the way this occurred and how it was handled. Nobody spoke-up. I was tempted to write a LTE, but did not at the time.