another ejection failure caused the death of a crewmember in September 1987
That crash occurred not far from my boyhood home - my dad knew a local reporter who overflew the crash site shortly afterwards - he said there was nothing left that even suggested it had once been an airplane.
They apparently hit a flock of large birds while practicing terrain following - one or more of the birds penetrated the leading edge of the wing and took out the hydraulics causing loss of control and the aircraft nosed it at something like 500 knots
Three crew were lost - there were six on-board but only four ejection seats, one died when his seat malfunctioned - the other two crew had parachutes but it happened so fast they never had a chance.
I never heard if they still allowed more crew that ejection seats after that crash.