page_title: Ramstein air show disaster
section_title: The crash
hierarchical_section_title: Ramstein air show disaster / The crash
caption_attribution_description: English: Diagram of the Ramstein airshow disaster, made in Blender and Gimp, based on different sources (videos, graphics, photos). Numbers indicate crash positions of the individual aircraft involved in the collision. Deutsch: Grafik des Flugtagunglücks von Ramstein, erstellt in Blender und Gimp, basierend auf verschiedene Quellen (Videos, Grafiken, Fotos). Die Zahlen bezeichnen Absturzpositionen der einzelnen in den Zusammenstoß involvierten Flugzeuge.
context_page_description: The Ramstein air show disaster occurred on Sunday, 28 August 1988 during the Flugtag '88 airshow at the United States' Ramstein Air Base near Kaiserslautern, West Germany.
  Three aircraft of the Italian Air Force display team collided during their display, crashing to the ground in front of a crowd of about 300,000 people. There were 70 fatalities and 346 spectators sustained serious injuries in the resulting explosion and fire, and hundreds more had minor injuries.
  At the time it was the deadliest air show accident in history. It is also the third-deadliest aviation accident to happen on German soil, after the 1972 Königs Wusterhausen air disaster and the 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision.
context_section_description: The mid-air collision took place as the two heart-forming groups passed each other and the heart-piercing aircraft hit them. The piercing aircraft crashed onto the runway and consequently both the fuselage and resulting fireball of aviation fuel tumbled into the spectator area, hitting the crowd and coming to rest against a refrigerated trailer being used to dispense ice cream to the various vendor booths in the area.
  At the same time, one of the damaged aircraft from the heart-forming group crashed into the emergency medical evacuation UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, injuring the helicopter's pilot, Captain Kim Strader. He died 20 days later, on Saturday, 17 September 1988, at Brooke Army Medical Center in Texas from burns he suffered in the accident.
  The pilot of the aircraft that hit the helicopter ejected, but was killed as he hit the runway before his parachute opened. The third aircraft disintegrated in the collision and parts of it were strewn along the runway.
  After the crash, the remaining aircraft regrouped and landed at Sembach Air Base.
caption: The flight-paths of the Frecce Tricolori aircraft
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