F 111 Crashes - It's enough to make anyone believe in miracles. On January 30, 1981, a $10.5 million FB-111A jet bomber crashed directly into the densest part of Portsmouth. At the time, about 2,500 people lived in the low-rent housing complex, known as Sea Crest and Mariner's Village. As the drone crashed to the ground, a spray of jet fuel ignited the buildings. But 40 years later, the worst aviation disaster in the world leaves no comment in local history.
Years later, police officer Albert Pace recalled, "There was a liquid fire running over the buildings." "It looked like a huge wave coming in on the beach, just a flame of liquid fuel. It was unbelievable."
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Pace was nearing the end of an uneventful eight-hour shift when he turned the Portsmouth cruiser on Circuit Road at 2.55pm. on Friday, January 30. Suddenly the sky fell. A loud noise was heard as a large fireball tore above Pace. A deafening blast rips through his inner ear.
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Eleven-year-old Mike Chwalek was just leaving Wentworth School when he heard a plane flying very low in the clear blue winter sky. "All of our kids stopped in our tracks," Chwalek recalls, "and looking west, we all saw this fighter plane over the trees in Seacrest Village, where most of the kids at my school live."
Chwalek remembers hearing two explosions, the second when the pilots launched the escape pod. The plane spun in the air, he said, then crashed below the tree line. He ran with other children to the scene of charred trees and burning buildings. The boys picked up pieces of the plane, but when they saw men in uniform getting out of military trucks, they got scared and ran away.
Bob Hersey, an airfield firefighter and emergency responder at the former Pease Air Force Base, now Pease International Trade Port, was one of the early arrivals. "When I first arrived on the scene, there were no firefighters or firefighting equipment," he said.
A man came out of the [burning] building on the left and he asked me to get him a hose. I told him there were no engines and to stay away from his flat and not go back.' Hersey pulled the man away from the downed power line. He found an elderly man dazed on the porch and pulled him to safety, then continued to fight the fire and search for possible victims.
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This was not the first or last accident for the FB-111A. Of the 76 planes produced by General Dynamics, 12 were destroyed, most of them disappearing into the forests of Maine and Vermont. Aircraft no. 68-0263 was like no other. It crashed like a meteor into the heart of the city, 200 meters from a row of wooden houses, spewing more than 2,000 liters of burning jet fuel and debris.
No way, no one was seriously injured. "The good Lord was good to us," said one witness. Truer words were never spoken.
Today, the crash site is known as Osprey Landing and Spinnaker Point. The housing development is located between downtown Portsmouth and the former Pease Air Force Base. Bomber Pease missed his escape by about two miles. Exactly what happened remains a mystery.
Gary Berg, a police officer in nearby Eliot, Maine, was driving in traffic near the Newington Mall when he heard a loud explosion and saw smoke to his right. Berg then saw a large orange parachute that looked like a space capsule floating on the ground.
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Berg followed the escape pod that took off from the jet just 10 seconds before the crash. He was the first official to take the stage. The 3,200-pound capsule's parachute cables are still attached to a tree behind 398 Cutts Ave. The flotation bags, designed to be deployed in the event of a water landing, were damaged and never fully inflated.
Captain Peter Karellas (33) and Major Ronald Reppe (39) were standing outside the survival capsule when Officer Berg arrived. Both are veterans of the 509th Bombardment Wing at Peas, each with more than 2,500 flight hours. The pilot Karellas takes the blame for the accident, but it was the navigator and weapons system operator Reppe who pulled the fire initiator's handle in time. Both men continued their flight after the incident. Neither agreed to be interviewed for this article.
"Where are we now?" asked one of the crew, Berg, who explained their situation. They landed 1,750 feet from the crash site, later reports indicated. When a crew member asked if the plane had landed in the city, Berg simply replied, "Yes." The two men were desperate, he recalled. They cheered a bit when Berg added that there were no reports of casualties at this stage.
Officials at Pease Air Force Base quickly shot down the rumor that the plane was carrying "nuclear weapons." Although the FB-111A is capable of carrying 37,500 pounds of missiles or bombs, according to a USAF spokesman, "we don't fly nuclear weapons on board here for obvious reasons."
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Most of the residents of the "village" were allowed to return home at 19:00. that night According to press reports, the 13 families left homeless by the crash were quickly sheltered or relocated in motels, and Pease AFB was compensated for any damage.
Today, most Portsmouth residents scratch their heads when asked about the event. Even longtime locals often don't know the details. Some remember miscalculations, myths or rumours. For example, Officer Albert Pace's patrol car was not blown 25 feet by the explosion, reports the Manchester Union Leader. Pace said today he was thrown off the road during a blinding explosion. The Portsmouth Herald initially reported that the crew's escape pod had landed at Eliot, but later corrected the error. The base closed in 1990, and no memorial marks the site of the city's greatest tragedy.
An official USAF accident report released in 2006 stated that the 1981 FB-111A crash was caused by the pilot's "improper" actions "during a stall." No irrefutable evidence contradicts the official conclusion that the pilot, Captain Peter Karellas, was technically responsible for the crash. There are troubling questions about the engines, the mission, the flight path, the performance of the bomber and the sequence of events that led to the two experienced crews crossing the runway at Pease Air Force Base two miles from the runway.
Although some witnesses on the ground said they saw the plane on fire, the accident report concluded that there was "no evidence of a fire in the plane." The fact that two new engines were installed on the FB-111A, which crashed the day before the accident, was barely mentioned in the accident report. Engines appear in a long list with the date the aircraft parts were last repaired. The report lists the engines as dated January 29, 1981 with a simple note saying "NEW NOT REPAIRED". But the new Pratt & Whitney TF-30-P7 engines, built for General Dynamics at a cost of $1,735,000, were ruled out as a cause in the early minutes of the investigation.
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"The FB-111A was essentially a project that never lived up to expectations," said retired Portsmouth Herald editor John Whiteman. He must know. Whiteman is one of the few civilians to see the sophisticated winged bomber in action. Before the 1981 accident, Whiteman was a 3.5-hour bomber flight from Pease AFB. Equipped with an advanced terrain mapping system, the fighter jet could fly 100 feet above the ground under conventional radar. The FB-111A can cruise at 565 mph, reach 1,600 mph at 36,000 feet, and travel 4,500 miles between refuels.
The JAG Board of Inquiry, as reported by Whiteman in April 1981, did not find pilot Peter Karellas legally responsible. In fact, according to the Portsmouth Herald, the council "found no cause for the accident". Karellas testified that the plane made "unusual turns".
Jack Gotherch, who spent more than a year investigating the crash in 1981, based his own theory on eyewitnesses who saw the plane spin before it crashed. "The plane itself," suggested Gorterx, "due to an unplanned port turn. "That is, it turned itself to the left several times. I believed that the ailerons turning the plane were malfunctioning. As they were during the one hour flight. I'll bet my last dollar it wasn't the engine or the pilot, it was the steering."
Copyright 2021 by J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved. Research assistance for this feature (adapted from the 2008 series) was provided by Jack Goterch of Derry, New Hampshire. Dennis is the author of dozens of history books, including the award-winning MusicHall: How the City Built the Theater and the Theater Shaped the City. SHE IS
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