A Mighty Crash
On Wednesday, Tom Guerrette brought his red Fly Fly BAE Hawk jet to fly at Baylands.
The day was windy, but this is a hefty plane, big enough to shrug off the wind.
“You shouldn’t take pictures,” Tom smiled. “It’s not painted yet.”
The Hawk did look mottled. Tom had spackled it to fill in dings and dents and hadn’t yet applied makeup. But it was mostly a nice bright red, and I’ve seen Tom fly much more homely aircraft than this spaceship-graceful speedster.
Going Home. I took some pictures — Tom wasn’t seriously protesting, and it’s an interesting-looking aircraft. Then I started to move my gear to the car, getting ready to go home.
As I was walking back from the car to get another load, I saw the Hawk streaking down the field. A moment later I heard a distinct Pop and then a loud Thud.
A moment later, Gary Morgan yelled from the field for me to take some pictures. Even from the picnic tables, the scene was dramatic: a 75-foot swath of foam debris marked the scene of the crash.
The Pop I heard was the tail section breaking loose after fluttering during a high-speed run. The Thud was, of course, the Hawk rocketing into the turf of the Great Meadow.
Empty Park. Because it was quite windy the park was relatively empty. No joggers or strollers at the time, so the crash caused no alarm or harm.
Every flyer in the park hustled over to view the wreckage.
Tom was characteristically good-natured about the mishap, perhaps thankful that the foam debris wasn’t better painted.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Great pics Pete,
Except for the pudgy guy in the green shirt…
I thought I heard a very short burst of high speed flutter before the pop too.
What a spectacular crash! Tom’s a good egg.
Gary
June 11th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
How about that? Not long before I left (and certainly not long before this happened) Pete commented that plane looked like it was getting ready to crash. But I didn’t stick around long enough to see it.
Good thing the field was empty.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:15 am
I’d love to claim awesome predictive abilities, but I was actually looking at a different plane when I foresaw disaster, and the other plane did not crash. That sort of forecast is easy to make on a windy day.
June 12th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
Oh my god, I so sorry to hear this is the second time with the same aircraft
Well let’s see it positive, he did not hit anybody nor create a distress on anybody 
The negative side is I hate to see a good airplane come down that way. At least it was glorious the way it died 
like every soldier says I rather died fighting than been home. I want the scoop on this, I will come to the field tomorrow.
June 13th, 2008 at 8:44 am
All I can say is “Man that thing was fast!!”
June 14th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Oops! My boo boo.
Went out to try to find the crater, but all I saw was something that looked like a Sharps .60 had misfired into the ground. Don’t think that was it. The lawn mower had already removed most of the crash debris.
Lots of “whumps” on Friday (none serious, I don’t think, but at times it was almost like a percussion section) and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized it was the 13th.
Dave