The sky was clear last Monday morning as the Air Force's crack flying team soared above the Nevada desert, practicing its stunts, which have caused gasps at aerial shows for nearly 30 years. At exactly 9:55 a.m. the four Thunderbird pilots went into a "line-abreast loop," a maneuver in which they roar along, wingtip to wingtip, about 100 ft. off the ground, zoom up to 2,500 ft., loop backward into a dive at 400 m.p.h., then pull out when they get back to 100 ft. This time they did not pull out. One jet hit the ground and the other three, locked into their now fatal formation, followed within a tenth of a second. They exploded in a ball of flame that one witness likened to napalm explosions he had seen in Viet Nam. Dead were Major Norman L. Lowry III, 37, the Thunderbirds' leader, and Captains Willie Mays, 32, Mark E. Melancon, 31, and Joseph Peterson, 32.
Nothing about the crash added up. The pilots were among the Air Force's finest. Their T-38 Talon twin-jet trainers are so easy to steer that flyers call them "baby buggies," and the line-abreast loop, spectacular as it looks, is a fairly routine maneuver. One speculation: the leader may have misjudged his altitude or speed, and the other three duplicated his error. Thunderbird Capt. Dale Cook was flying solo that day. Says he: "I really can't speculate on what may have gone wrong. When you are flying in formation you are not just watching the leader. You watch your instruments, air speed, altitude, the other aircraft and where you are relative to everything else." An Air Force board of inquiry will take weeks to determine the "probable cause," and officers are not ruling out a mid-air collision, though eyewitness accounts contain no hint of one.
Some of the 80 shows the Thunderbirds had been scheduled to perform this year in the U.S. will probably be canceled. The Air Force, however, has no thought of disbanding the Thunderbirds, despite the risks and deaths. Seventeen pilots have been killed in accidents since the Thunderbirds began flying in May 1953, two last year. But the Thunderbirds have enthralled 154 million spectators in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries. Overseas, they demonstrate U.S. aerial prowess; at home, they serve as a flying recruiting poster. Says Secretary of the Air Force Verne Orr: "There will be criticism, that's inevitable. But it won't lead to abandonment of the Thunderbirds."