Hey Tommy, since you were there, what did you think of the show (other than Tom going in)? I was up there all three days and couldn't believe what all I saw. It was the best airshow I've ever been to - and the most tragic.
For those that weren't there, it was Aerospace America '90 and was the first air show in the US that the Russians demonstrated their aircraft. They had the AN-224 (?) heavy lift aircraft, two SU-27s (doing Cobra maneuvers no less) a heavy lift helo with counterrotating rotors and no tail rotor, and were also doing demos of the Sukhoi SU-26 aerobatic airplane (the Russian SU-26 test/demo pilot flew on Friday).
The US military was there and wasn't about to let the SU-27s upstage them so they also put on a show like none I've ever seen before. It was a magical airshow until the crash on Sunday.
The SU-26 demo was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. He had it wings vertical and was pirouetting (sp?) it around the wings. He crossed the crowd line though during the demo and the Russians grounded him.
That is what caused Tom to decide to fly - so that there would still be SU-26 flights. He was airshow director and was doing flights in the hot Oklahoma sun on top of everything else. In his Saturday show, he interrupted it at one point to take a breather and said so to the crowd over the PA system (in-flight transmission). On Sunday, though, there were no clouds at all. The act before him went long, and Tom sat there in the big greenhouse on the apron waiting to go up. During that flight is when he crashed. It was obvious that something was wrong about two maneuvers before the crash. I don't know if they ever decided if it was mechanical or not but it looked to me like it was pilot. He almost overflew the crowd it looked to me and pushed from inverted to vertical and that was when he hung on the prop for a second and then spun in about 2 turns. My guess is he was unconscious at that point.
But it was bad. His daughters watched their dad die on Father's day. Tom was a local celebrity too for all the air show stuff going on and he had made Aerospace America a premier event for the entire country. It was his coup that got the Russians here with their jets and also helped to get the importation of the SU-26 going. It stunned everyone.
