The Ramstein air show disaster is the second-deadliest air show incident (following that in 2002 at Sknyliv). It took place in front of about 300,000 people on Sunday August 28, 1988, in Ramstein, West Germany, near the city of Kaiserslautern at the US Ramstein Air Base airshow Flugtag '88.
Aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display, crashing to the ground. 67 spectators and 3 pilots died, 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire.
Read more about Ramstein Air Show Disaster: Background, The Crash, Timeline, Emergency Response, Investigation, References in Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the words air, show and/or disaster:
“I wonder whether mankind could not get along without all these names, which keep increasing every day, and hour, and moment; till at the last the very air will be full of them; and even in a great plain, men will be breathing each other’s breath, owing to the vast multitude of words they use, that consume all the air, just as lamp-burners do gas.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“When wine is spilled with accident, death and disaster hasten.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Ah Ling, Murder by Television, after he accidentally spills wine on Mrs. Houghland (1935)