Fighter Bomber Crash Up Close and Personal

It was clear skies that day on January 30th 1981, Seacrest Village New Hampshire. I remember it well almost as if were yesterday. It was about 2:45 pm and I was eleven and half years old at the time. The school bell at Wentworh school had just sounded the end of the school day and a bunch of us kids were just stepping out of the schools front door. When we hear the sound of a low flying jet overhead. Looking up I see a fighter jet which I later find out was an FB111-Aardvark. A Fighter Bomber out of Pease Air force base about 4 miles away from where I lived.



All of kids stopped in our tracks, and looking westward we all saw this fighter jet just above the tree tops of Seacrest Village, the apartment complexes where most of the kids at my school lived. I remember it was moving  really slow, flying level for a little bit near the villages water tower. Then you heard the jet throttle up boosting it's engines a second later a small explosion came  from somewhere near the back of the jet and .  then I saw the jet start upward like it was going to do a loop to loop and a split second after that another smaller explosion.

This was when the capsule was nose up into the loop and you saw the capsule that the pilot and navigator were in, go flying up and away from the jet. The fighter jet now without a pilot finished the loop, by nose diving straight into the ground. At least from my vantage point. It looked like it nosed dived, but apparently  now many years later when looking at the crash photos it must have completed the loop and  did a belly smacker into the apartment complexes.

A huge dark mushroom shaped cloud rose into the air. and a second later you heard the explosion. At that point and I'm not really sure why. But most of us kids went running full tilt in the direction of the crash, which was only a couple blocks away from where the school was.

As we got close to the crash site, I remember the burning smell and started to see scorched trees and burnt ground. I started to see small pieces of plane debris laying all over the place and proceeded to pick  some up as I went.  I believe it was about a ten inch long piece of  fuel line and a small 6 inch piece of the skin of the plane. As I got closer I remember seeing the  Apartment buildings on fire and a big chunk of one of the buildings was missing and was on fire, from where the jet had slammed into it  and part of the other building next to it was on fire as well and some of the area  and trees around the crash site. I was probably a hundred feet away at this point.

I remember seeing  some military trucks and personal getting out of the trucks and hearing popping sounds. It was at this point that I decided that I should leave, since somehow I knew having a couple of parts to the plane in my hands was not good. I ran home as fast as I could, which was only a block or so away Where I told my Mom what had happened.

I got to say that this was a very memorable moment in my life and I have told this story so many times through out the years it seem like yesterday as I sit here typing it out. I was quite surprised to find a web site yesterday that claimed to have rare photos of the crash at seacrest village. I have always thought people thought I was just making this story up so its very cool to see the articles and the photographs of the crash online.

 If you want to read  the article on it and see the  rare pictures of the crash go to the link I have provided at the bottom of this post. I would post the pictures here but the photographer apparently has them copyrighted.

http://www.seacoastnh.com/History/History_Matters/The_Day_the_FB111A_Crashed/