“According to our Dallas County Medical Examiner, there were a total of 6 deaths due to the Wings over Dallas air show incident yesterday,” Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins tweeted Sunday. He said authorities are continuing to work to identify the victims.
Emergency crews rushed to the scene of the crash at Dallas Executive Airport, about 10 miles (16 km) from downtown. News footage from the scene showed debris from the plane in a grassy area inside the airport’s perimeter. The Dallas Fire-Rescue told the Dallas Morning News that there were no reports of injuries to people on the ground.
Anthony Montoya saw two planes collide.
World War II military plane collides mid-air at Dallas air show
Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend, said: “I just stood there. I was completely shocked and couldn’t believe it.” “Everybody around gasped. Everyone burst into tears. Everyone was shocked.”
Officials did not specify how many people were inside each plane, but Hank Coates, president of the company that organized the show, said one of the planes, a B-17 Flying Fortress bomber , usually with a crew of 4 to 5 people. The other, a P-63 Grand cobra fighter, has a single pilot.
Coates, of the Commemorative Air Force, which also owns the planes, said there were no paying customers on board. Their planes are flown by highly trained volunteers, often retired pilots, he said.
Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson said the National Transportation Safety Board was at the scene of the crash, with local police and fire assistance assisting.
“The videos are heartbreaking,” Johnson said on Twitter.
The planes collided and crashed around 1:20 p.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. The collision happened during the Air Force show celebrating Wings Over Dallas.
Victoria Yeager, widow of famed Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager and herself a pilot, was also at the show. She did not see the impact, but did see the burning wreckage.
“It was pulverized,” said Yeager, 64, who lives in Fort Worth.
“We just hoped they all got out, but we know they didn’t,” she said of those on board.
The B-17, the cornerstone of U.S. air power during World War II, was a massive four-engine bomber used in daytime air raids against Germany. The Kingcobra, an American fighter aircraft, was used mostly by Soviet forces during the war. Most of the B-17s were scrapped at the end of World War II and only a few remain today, most of which are on display at museums and air shows, according to Boeing.
Several videos posted on social media showed the fighter jet seemingly hitting the bombers, causing them to quickly plunge to the ground and create a large ball of fire and smoke.
“It’s really horrible to see,” Aubrey Anne Young37-year-old Leander, Texas, who witnessed the crash. Her children were in the hangar with their father when it happened. “I’m still trying to understand it.”
A woman next to Young can be heard crying and screaming hysterically in a video Young uploaded to her Facebook page.
Airshow safety – especially with older military aircraft – has been a concern for many years. In 2011, 11 people were killed in Reno, Nevada, when a P-51 Mustang crashed into an audience. In 2019, a bomber crashed in Hartford, Connecticut, killing seven people. The NTSB later said it had investigated 21 crashes since 1982, involving World War II-era bombers, that killed 23 people.
According to a website promoting the event, Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Top World War II Airshow Show”. The show is scheduled for November 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests will get to see more than 40 World War II-era aircraft. Its Saturday afternoon flight schedule included a “bomber parade” and “fighter escort” featuring B-17s and P-63s.
Videos of previous Wings Over Dallas events depict classic fighters flying low, sometimes in close formation, on simulated or bombing routes. The videos also show the planes performing aerobatics.
The FAA is also opening an investigation, officials said.
