Reaction to the FB-111A Jet Crash Anniversary

NOTE: This article appeared in 2021 on the 40th anniversary of the crash.
SEE our FB111-A crash feature

I’d like to propose a memorial. Somewhere in the woods near Osprey Landing and Spinnaker Point, not far from the water tower, this city should erect a small granite monument. “At this spot on the afternoon of January 30, 1981,” a brass plate  should read, “a miracle happened.” That’s all it will say. There might be the image of a jet bomber, but no more words. 

The goal of a good memorial is to both honor someone or some event, but also to continually spark interest in the past. Unfortunately, we tend to memorialize tragedy and disaster while forgetting the teachable close calls. The fact that there were no casualties when a FB-111A jet plane crashed into the most populated part of Portsmouth is exactly the reason we need to remember the event, to study it, to talk about it, and to memorialize it. 

And now is the time, while the event is still within living memory, to memorialize the miracle. We should also create an exhibition somewhere that explains what happened-and what didn’t happen 40 years ago. Someone should write a book, or a ballad, or build an archive, or assemble an oral history. I’ve long suggested that we bring the escape capsule (it is still in storage at a military facility) back to Portsmouth and put it on permanent display. 

I received about a dozen notes from people who read my article about the FB111-A crash in Sunday’s newspaper. In the first few hours that it appeared online, I’m told, it was viewed by over 6,000 readers. At least 100 people commented about it on Facebook. 

And that’s what history does. It turns a near forgotten moment back into a living breathing entity. One reader from Kittery recalled that the clean-up crew from Pease AFB gave local kids a lollipop for each piece of debris they found in the woods. Another woman, upon hearing the crash, grabbed her baby and rushed out of her burning apartment, then remembered that her husband was still sleeping inside.

“Wow, is all I can say,” Erica wrote to me. “I was 9 when this happened and it has never left my mind. That day is fresh in my mind. I am glad to see it wasn’t completely forgotten.”  

Betty, who later moved to North Carolina, wrote to say “it was a very scary time for us.” Three of her daughters were home when the crash occurred three buildings away from their apartment. The girls remembered seeing their living room turn orange as the flames appeared. It was hours before all members of the family, separated by the crash, were reunited.  

Mark was on Interstate 95 heading to work at Pease AFB when he saw the jet. “We watched the bomber go down. I can still see it so clearly – spinning on its way to the ground, black smoke, flames shooting out in spurts.”

Susan watched the burning jet go by her friend’s bedroom window. Mark saw it from his house in Eliot. Lauren heard the explosion on the job at York Hospital. Jim saw the parachute coming down from his third-floor apartment on Columbia Street in Portsmouth. Mike still has dreams about seeing the fireball when the plane hit the ground. Rindy can’t stop thinking about that day whenever she drives by the spot. 

“In 1983, there were still pieces of the bomber scattered around the neighborhood,” Ken recalls. “I picked up a four-inch piece of debris that year and kept it until I joined the Marines four years later.”

One anonymous reader, identified only as a former Strategic Air Command veteran, took issue with my coverage of the story. “Anyone who has actually flown, maintained, modified, or been close to an FB-111A on a regular basis would find some of your claims to be absurd,” he wrote. “I look forward to a time when all journalism is just the facts; not tainted with hype, controversy, spin, opinion, bias, and fabrication. Until then, I encourage you to print a retraction/correction of this article with accurate information. Much of your ‘article’ dishonors an outstanding weapon system and also dishonors the amazing people who served with it honorably.”

I’m pretty sure that questioning the facts behind a near deadly crash is not the same as dishonoring an entire weapon system, its makers or crew. If anything dishonors the FB-111A, it would be to ignore its failures and let them sink into obscurity. And I bet we could learn a lot by crowd-sourcing the memory of hundreds of eyewitnesses and continuing to study the official report that was not released until 25 years after the near-tragedy. And maybe someday the two men who ejected from the fighter jet 10 seconds before it hit the ground will tell their story.  

Bob, who worked at Pease, commented on Facebook this week. He disputes the conclusion that the crash was due to pilot error. No training flight would ever have purposely taken the jet over the populated area, he wrote. “There is never any one thing that causes an accident typically. It’s a chain of events that, if one step is changed, the accident would not have happened. But in typical SAC fashion everything including the crew are responsible. If the wing fell off, they would say the pilot should have checked it.” –JDR

Copyright  J. Dennis Robinson, all rights reserved.