Our Stories of the Ramstein Flugtag 1988 continued....

The following are stories submitted by our visitors and friends about their memories of the Flugtag. Thank you all for your submissions, and come back soon as more will be posted. Christina
We remember...

I was also there that day.
I was stationed at Landstuhl.

I had my four month old son in a stroller and I had taken the day to spend time with my German girlfriends.
This was the first time that they had been on post. I remember having a bad feeling that day.
Someone made a comment behind me... "One of these planes is going to end up crashing". That statement from a fellow soldier somewhere in the crowd garnered a roll of muttered agreement through the crowd.

We were standing very close to the ice cream van.
I remember thinking that people were being very nice to let us up front with our baby in the stroller. As the French team flew overhead I had a terrible ominous feeling. I had to crane my neck as they flew from the air field, over our heads and out of sight behind us.

When the Italian team began to fly so near, I got butterflies in my stomach. I usually would ignore those feelings as just being paranoid and force myself to stay and not 'be stupid'. I turned to my best friend Christiana. "I don't think they are supposed to fly right over the crowd". I said to her."If they had an accident we would not be able to get out of here".

I knew I was not just being paranoid when I looked at Christiana.
Christiana looked at me like she was really scared. "We wouldn't be able to get the stroller out of here. Somebody would trample it", she said. At that point she removed my son Joshua from the stroller and held him as we turned and started walking towards the barracks. We had a friend who's barrack's were right off of the flight line and, although we knew that we would not be allowed to go into the barracks, especially with the baby, we still headed that way.

I figured my friend would have some idea where we could go to wait for the next bus back to post. My husband Troy (we weren't married yet) was working that day at the emergency room at LARMC so I could not get a ride from him.

I remember everything like slow motion from that point.
I remember it was so pretty out there.
Just a beautiful day.

My other friends had run off to flirt with GI's and do the things that 20 year old German girls do when they are finally let loose with a bunch of Air Force guys. I asked Christiana if we should go look for them."No, let's just get to the barracks and we'll let the guys go find them. We got to the front door of the barracks. As I reached my hand down and grabbed the front door, the planes hit. There was screaming. I still had my hand on the door as the plane hit the crowd. I will never forget that feeling. My entire body was shaking from the blast. It felt like an earthquake. The building was groaning and every glass window was shaking so hard that I thought for sure they would break.

I screamed at Christiana. There wasn't any blast noise really. More like something had hit and sucked all the air away for a minute. I had the sensation that there was ringing in my ears, but I couldn't hear it.
Just intense pressure.
I was yelling as loud as I could to get inside and Christiana couldn't hear me. I felt like my eardrums were going to burst.
We made it inside the door and we were screaming that there was an earthquake. Airmen came running from all over the building, somebody grabbed me and asked if I was Okay.
"The planes just crashed", he said."No, I think it's an earthquake"! Sounds crazy now, but somewhere in my mind I knew it COULDN'T be the planes. A plane crash would be loud and this was just heat and pressure.

We found my friend as he was leaving his room to run outside. He grabbed my son and said, "you have to go they called a mass-cal (mass casualty) at LARMC". I worked on 1 Delta at LARMC. That is the psyche ward. What the hell good was I going to be in a mass casualty situation? My friends took Josh and said they would take him back to my girlfriend's house. I had to get on a bus. The Emergency Commander on Ramstein got a bus to carry all soldiers back to LARMC.

When I arrived at the emergency room it was already full of gurneys. It was nearly silent.
I have never witnessed anything like it. There was a little blond haired girl laying on a gurney, she could not have been more than five. Her burns were so severe that she wasn't even crying. Her eyelids were burned off and she was staring at me and her chest was heaving up and down struggling for breath. The only sound from her was a gurgling as she tried to breath. I don't know if she lived, my husband worked on her, but refuses to discuss it.

At this point I remember almost passing out. My husband came up behind me. "Go see 'So and So' (sorry, can't remember her name), she is in charge of setting up beds".

I was taken upstairs to an empty ward. The guys were bringing in empty beds and we began putting linen on them.
Some guys were bringing in some other material for burn patients to lay on, they explained to me that this would stop them from sticking to the sheets.

I wish I could remember more... or not.
I don't know... it is like a movie I saw, but kept closing my eye's through the scary parts.
I know what happened, but I can't remember it.

I know it lasted all day, but I can only remember a few scenes here and there. I don't remember riding in the ambulance. I don't know how I got back to Ramstein. I must have ridden in SOMETHING... yet nothing comes to memory. I went back to Ramstein and our psych department set up an information center for the people who were waiting to hear news about missing loved ones.

It was in some type of auditorium. It was packed full of crying families. I spoke a little German and I was taking names to compare with the ones coming in from the hospital. I was there a long time, but again, I cannot remember more than one or two things.
I remember sitting with a German grandma and grandpa who were looking for their daughter and granddaughter. I remember sitting and rubbing her back while she was crying and clinging onto me.
I remember at some point passing out Kool-aid in dixie cups.

If I met someone who had gone through a traumatic experience like that and couldn't remember what happened, I would tell them to see a psychiatrist. I, however, don't want to think about it. This is the first time I've ever written about that day. I was much more traumatized than I realized. I am crying as I write this. I received a 'Letter of Commendation' from the Air Force Commander for helping set up the Information Center. My husband, who saved countless lives in the ER that day, did not. My friend from the barracks was given the task of walking the flight line and picking up body parts the next day, but he did not receive a 'Commendation' either.

I have never read that 'Commendation'. I have seen it only once since we left Germany. I found it when we were in the process of moving... I don't know where it is now. I don't want to see it. It is just a reminder of how utterly useless I felt on that awful day. There were many more deserving than I, and if I could give that 'Commendation' to anyone I would have given it to my husband... he was truly a hero that day.

We also lost a good helicopter pilot that day, Lt. Strader, in his UH60 Blackhawk, was there for medical evacuations. One of the planes that crashed on the runway actually came down on the Blackhawk. Lt. Strader was inside of it.
God Bless you and yours.

On a personal note... I used your name on my blog with a link back to your site. Thank you so much... sharing has made the memory easier to deal with.

There were also static displays. The day started early for us, we had to be on base and ready to go at 0600 hrs. This was one day I didn't mind working when normally it would have been my day off. This was because I really enjoyed airplanes and especially air shows. I am not a superstitious person but I remember that morning very well. It was very foggy but the moon was completely full and I do believe that full moons definitely affect the actions and moods of people. I reported to work and was the first one there. I began to check the ambulance and all the supplies. Eventually all of the team showed up.

I was anxious to get to the flight line and see all that was going on and get a first peek at all the different aircraft assembled there. We did drive around checking out the situation and were enjoying it. Eventually we had to get our ambulance and crew into our pre assigned spot, which was on the opposite side of the flightline from where the main crowd would be. With us would be a Flight Surgeon, Bio-environmental Engineers, one airforce helicopter assigned for security, one politzie helicopter and one army Black hawk Medevac chopper. All were in place but the Army helicopter, when they arrived they landed and the pilot walked up to us jokingly complaining that we were in his spot, we jokingly said that they should have been on time.

It was now approximately 1000hrs and it was still fairly foggy out. I felt like the air show was going to be cancelled which would have been very disappointing. Now that we were in place we decided to kill some time and walk around awhile. We immediately went to where all the team planes were parked. We looked them over allot and thought about what these machines would be doing in just a short time. After we did that we were throwing around a ball and Frisbee to kill some more time. 1100 finally came and the crowds were allowed on base and they came by the thousands. It was my impression that the senior leadership of the base were very concerned about possible terrorist activities.

There were helicopters in the air flying search like patterns and both German and American police everywhere. There were several so-called aid stations set-up around the crowd area and the entire clinic was working that day. You could tell who was from the clinic because of their Red Cross armbands. Finally as the day went on the fog started to lift and it was a very clear and sunny day. The air-show was now underway. It was the biggest and best I'd ever seen. The moment I was most anxious is when a Belgium helicopter was performing aerobatics that I didn't think helicopters could do, such as what appeared to be an aerial loop, but it finished it's show and landed safely. It was at this point that I was very relaxed with the whole thing and a crash wasn't on any of our minds. Those techs that were not watching were all asleep either in the back of the ambulance or in lounge chairs they had brought. The end of the show was nearing and it was time for the last team to fly, it was the Italian team known as the Tricolore, which means three colors of the Italian flag. They had the reputation as being the most daring and using the highest number of aircraft during their performance.

By now there were only three techs awake and they were me and two other male airman. We were watching from in front of the ambulance. It was the last maneuver in their show it was called the pierced heart. This is where all eleven aircraft take off together, then brake up into two groups at the top of the heart with a solo pilot breaking off to eventually pierce the heart. That was what was supposed to have happened. As we watched all aircraft converge at the bottom of the heart flying parallel to the runway and the main crowd the solo plane approached at high speed, before we knew it we heard a loud thump and felt a great amount of heat. It happened so quickly that for an instant we did not realize what had happened. We instinctively ran and dove toward the ambulance for cover.

When we finally realized that they indeed had hit one another we looked and saw the stand-by Med-evac helicopter's entire front torn up and on fire. It had been hit by one of the three aircraft that had just crashed. Without thinking I ran to the black hawk where I saw an injured crewmember attempting to drag the severely burned pilot out of the fire but couldn't because of his injuries. I grabbed the pilot by the collar of his flight suit and together we dragged him to the ambulance. By now his entire face was swollen from the burns and a large portion of his flight suit was burned away. He was conscious and insisting that we help the others first. By now the Doc was awake and so were the other techs and they began treatment of the pilot. There were several techs attending him so for some reason I grabbed a fire extinguisher from the ambulance and ran toward the burning aircraft. I tried to extinguish the flames but it was no use, suddenly a huge fire truck pulled up and began hosing down the black hawk. I went back to the pilot and doc yelled out to get an IV setup so I did. I was about to insert the catheter into his arm but it was badly swollen from the burns. Doc (who did a two year residency in anesthesiology) grabbed the IV from me and in one shot got it started. That pilot later died of complications secondary to the burns. He was married and had 5 children and because he was to be promoted soon the Army promoted him to Capt prior to his death, he was a brave man. It was at this point when I heard someone shouting “oh my God it hit the crowd”, we couldn't believe the huge ball of smoke coming from where the main crowd was. My first thought was that my wife, who was 9 months pregnant at the time, and 2 year and 4 year old sons were over there. At that time Doc was very focused on the pilot and I knew we had to get over to the other side of the flight line. I told all but one tech to come with me to the other side while Doc and one tech took care of the pilot. As I drove down the taxi way it was covered with debris from the crash but I just drove over it. One of the other experienced techs in the ambulance began to scream she couldn't believe what was happening and her family was there also. We tried to calm her down but we were quickly approaching the main crowd. Another tech remained totally quiet and calm, but too calm. As we weaved our way between the crowd we finally found the main impact site. I parked the ambulance and got out and as I did someone who was carrying a badly burned little girl handed her to me. She was screaming Mama, Mama and talking in German. I quickly placed her on a stretcher and yelled to Dave the “calm tech” to get me some sterile water from the back of the ambulance. H e replied calm down Mike I yelled her clothes were still burning. Once he gave me the water I poured over the still smoking clothes and then began to cut away her clothes. I was trying to comfort her by talking to her but it was futile. As I began to cut away her pants I could not go below her ankle for the flames burned the exposed flesh and the pants were sticking to her flesh . I then covered her with sterile dressings and by now helicopters were landing near by to evacuate some of the victims. We carried her to the chopper, which was not configured for litters, but managed to load her on anyway. It was at this moment I could have gotten out of this horrible mess and flew with her to a hospital especially since I had 4 years experience flying air rescue but I knew I was needed there or maybe I wanted to know the fate of my family. I helped load another victim on another chopper and I remember looking at him. He looked like he was about 17 years old and he was so pale white from shock and sweating profusely but had no obvious signs of trauma that I could see but it was obvious that he was dying, I saw the look n his eyes like he was asking me to help him I could only say hang in there and they took him away on the chopper. By now our whole team had gotten separated and the ambulance was gone. I just had my medical bag and supplies were running out quickly. As I went on my own I saw allot of different things such as non-medical people pouring ice from the refreshment stands over burned victims, piles of cameras, ice chest and lawn chairs and a plastic bag of change that some child probably brought to buy souvenirs or snacks. The sounds of sirens never seemed to stop. The crowds still trying to make their way off base. Their faces in disbelief. I came across 5 people doing CPR and applying MAST to a patient and I yelled to them he's dead, help the others. I was constantly praying that my family was OK and if they weren't not to let me see them. At one point when many of the victims were gone I saw many bodies covered with everything from blankets to an American flag. Once I wondered if in the chaos some of these people were not really dead so I lifted the flag off of one victim and saw that he had no head. I didn't check any more after that. The next thing I knew I was on the back of a truck with 4 victims headed toward the clinic. When I arrived I found total chaos. There were people everywhere and no one seemed to be in charge. Victims were lying all around outside and inside the clinic. The smell of burned flesh and Jp4 jet fuel was unforgettable. One of the admin techs with a red cross on her arm was yelling I'm just an admin person; help me, but when people saw that red cross they headed for it expecting a medically trained person as they should have in my opinion. Another person came to me with his young son and they were German. His arm was obviously broken in 2 places and I tried to find something to splint it with for we were out of supplies. I saw some cloth on the ground and grabbed it only to find it was some burned clothing from someone. I then quickly ran upstairs to our office where we had some supplies we used for Dr.s offices and our ambulances but I could not find the key. So I thought I would just kick the door open but little did I know that the doorframe was made of metal. I kicked so hard that my foot went through the door before opening. After many attempts I broke open the door and got the supplies out although there weren't many. By now most of the victims had been transported to hospitals. I realized I had an opportunity to call home but I was afraid to. I overcame that fear and called home, I got an answer and it was my wife, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't speak right away. Once I could I was breathing very quickly and she did not even know what had happened. She could hardly believe what I was telling her. She had apparently left the show because she was having labor pains. Eventually our team all got back together and Doc said we had to start the accident investigation. We were all in kind of a daze but went on with our duties. We had recovered the bodies of the fliers and it was getting dark. Finally we all got to go home at about 1100pm that night. As I drove home it really started to hit me what had transpired that day. When I got home my family was asleep so I took a bath and could not seem to get the smell of burned flesh and fuel off of my body. I tried scouring powder and even using lots of after shave but could not remove it. I was totally exhausted but could not sleep so I tried drinking a couple of beers. I finally got to sleep around 1230 when my wife woke me and said it was time to have the baby. She said her water had broken but I insisted that it was only her bladder leaking from the pressure of the baby. She put my hand on the bed and I realized that she was right. Having been our third child we both thought that the labor and delivery would be easy but it was not. The hospital smelled like that “smell” and it really bothered me but I had to be there for my wife. She later said I was the most help I'd ever been. This was because I just sat there thinking about what had happened and automatically responding to her back labor by massaging her back like a machine. Finally after a long labor it was delivery time. When our son delivered he had a strangulated chord and was a deep purple. He did not start breathing and they were on the phone for the pediatrician. My wife did not know what was going on because they were very calm about what was going on, however I did know what was happening. She kept telling me to take his picture. I remember looking up at God with tears running down my cheeks saying, please no more, suddenly James David Burton began to cry and his color quickly changed to a beautiful pink. I began to weep for joy and sorrow at the same time. Days and weeks went by and it seemed like every day in the Stars and Stripes newspaper we had to read about another person dying. We were also criticized by Monday morning quarterbacks on how we should have handled the situation. I thought I was OK with all of this until a couple of weeks after the disaster I took my family to the Ramstein Officers Wives Bazaar, a huge event held to raise money. This event was held in a hanger near the flight line. After James was born I took leave and had not been back to base for a while and this was the first time back. As we approached I saw some of the same large tarps set up that were all over the day of flughtag. There were also barbecues burning. Before I knew it I could go no closer and was very scared. I began to smell burning flesh and fuel again and started to walk quickly away. My wife began to holler in a loud voice what was wrong with me. She approached me, saw that I was crying, and did not know what to do. I finally composed myself enough to go on but was extremely uncomfortable the rest of our time there. A short time later my wife and I argued about what channel to watch on TV and I went into a rage. I destroyed our stereo and VCR but did not touch her. It was not until much later did I realize just what I was really lashing out at. A total of 70 innocent people died that day and over 400 maimed and injured all because of a split second mistake.

Michael F. Burton
MICHAEL F. BURTON MSgt, USAF
55th Wing/IG Superintendent

My name is Daimon and this is my story of the flugtag august 28,1988

I remember me my mom my dad and my brother allgoing to the flutag airshow in ramstein germany.it was a pretty warm day actually kinda hot day...and we all showed up and seen all the planes sitting in a big lot and where amazed that we could walk up to them and look at them..cuz we had never been that close to a military plane before...i remember me and my brother walking around looking up in the sky watching the planes do there tricks...and thinking how cool that was ....then we got down around the runway a few hours later .and seeing the planes doing tricks up close ... and i remember looking up and seeing a jet spinning in the air doing a trick and kinda free falling..and i remember it kinda scared me to see it do that ....but finaly the plane straightend up and got its self out of the spin and took off agin....and a thought kept ringing in my head something telling me to go back to where mom and dad where standing i remember being kinda scared...so i told my brother .we need to go back to mom and dad cuz i just dont feel right at all....so he siad ok lets go...then on the way back i remember seeing a friend from school we where only in the 3rd grade and i said hi to him and me and my brother continued back to where mom and dad where ......so we finaly made it back and they where sitting in there chairs and they asked if we where haveing fun..and we said yes that it was pretty cool....then mom said well its almost over we will be leaveing before to long....then about a half hour passed and we where sitting there and my mom and dads best friends kid was with us and he was being stung by a bee...so me and my brother was staring at him then finaly the bee went away...right about that time mom said WATCH WATCH its the end of the show this is the grand fanally.. so we all looked up watching the palnes make a big heart shape kind of circle....then they came down and was gonna fly by each other real close and two of the planes struck each other and then one blew into a big giant ball of fire and landed in the crowed and slideing a good distance...there are no words that can explain how i felt at that moment...i was scared more then anything in this world for the people who where down there .....and i remember my dad saying oh my god we need to go now...so we ran off base and ran down a little side road to our car we could hear ambulances fire trucks and everything else you could imagine.....and i remember being silent the whole way cuz i had never seen anything like that before in my life and i still havent...and i pray that no one ever has to witness what we did.....there are no words that can explain how bad i feel for the familys who lost loved ones that day... thankyou...Daimon

I remember we were scrambling to try to get to the ROTC tent as the plane went that general direction and we were terrified to find the truth but knew we had to. It was absolute mayhem, as anyone will tell you. People were screaming and yelling, but amazingly, noone was trampling anyone. Everyone was just trying to get away and get anyone else away they could help. We got back to the tent and checked in and from then on it was like we were all on auto-pilot or something. Just crazy. My Dad
worked in COMM, so he had to go into work. I remember finally being able to leave in our car. As vendors we were able to park closer, so it took us longer to get out. As we were leaving, there was this man in his Army greens. In retrospect, I would guess him to be no more than 20. My Dad stopped the car and got out to help him in our backseat and give him a ride to wherever he needed to go. I think it was then, that the enormity of it all really hit me, as his uniform was covered in blood and he was zombie-like. Almost hypnotized - as one is apt to be when faced with death and tragedy so head on like that. I often wonder what became of him,
but I don't even remember his name. I and the kids I was with were babysitters for hours for the kids of the parents who went to help. My Mom went to the Falcon Theater with some of the other spouses and helped with check-in. I couldn't go into the gyms for a long time after, as I knew they had been used for morgues.

I remember when we got home that night, very late, our neighbors came running out to meet us. They were frantic. They'd told us our phone had been ringing off the hook, but try as they might, they couldn't break into the house to answer it since we'd locked it. My oldest brother had moved back stateside with our grandparents and he and my grandfather had been watching the news when it came on. The were petrified because since all of the tapes were confiscated, there were all kinds of videos everywhere. The clip that they happened to see scared the hell out of them as it was my Dad yelling and screaming "My kids! Where are my kids! Vanya!
Jimmy! Paul! Where are you?!" With a name like mine coupled with my brothers - my family back home was on pins and needles until we were finally able to get through hours later and let them know were okay.

I remember the next day at school, nobody did anything. It was pretty much a 'check-in' thing for the first few days. There were so many kids not at school that we were all united and worrying that some of our classmates had been among the casualties. It was so difficult. I don't look through that yearbook so much, as there is the picture of the crash, seemingly bigger than life, right in color, right in the front in the headlines section. I get chills just thinking about it. I, like most, probably haven't flown well since. Pretty difficult since my husband is in the Air Force and we all know it is the preferred mode of transport for the government. I do wish they'd allow cruises.

I've never put these thoughts 'on paper' before. I hope it brings me a step closer to healing. I don't know if I will ever get over my fear of flying, but I do try. I have shared all of this extensively with my husband. Blessedly, he is very supportive any time we have to fly. To all those lives lost, injured and forever changed by that fateful Sunday afternoon, my thoughts and prayers for you all.