Phantom crash report - RAF Abingdon 88
This is taken from an RAF accident report:
"On 23 September 1988, the crew of XV428 flew to RAF Abingdon to carry out a display practise prior to the air display the next day..
On arrival at Abingdon, they overflew the airfield at 2000ft before running in for their practice. During this overflight, they confirmed that the minimum height for the display was to be 500ft and they discussed the position of the display line and crowd centre. They were passed the surface wind as being between 240 & 330
degrees at 10 to 20 kts with occasional gusts to 30kts.
Having cleared the airfield area, XV428 then ran in from the west along the display axis parallel to and north of runway 08 with the crowdline 780ft to their right.
The aircraft was well to the right of crowd centre after completing a left 360 degrees hard turn since no allowance appeared to have been made for the strong wind. It was seen to roll out of the turn and immedietly enter a very hard pull up using full reheat.
As it approached the top of the loop, the aircraft appeared to be slower and lower than usual and at the apex, it was seen to fly in the inverted position for several seconds; the pilot appeared to be 'pushing' and maintaining level flight. During the second half of the loop, the initial pitch rate to the vertical appeared slow and at the vertical the aircraft was alarmingly low. From there on the pull became increasingly hard and some wing rock occured and just before impact the aircraft achieved a nose up attitude of 10-15 degrees but with a massive rate of descent. The Phantom impacted tail first some 819ft from and parellel to the crowdline. It disintigrated immedietly and wreckage came no closer than 400ft to the crowdline. The crew were killed on impact with the ground."
A very sad day indeed at Abingdon, RIP Flt lt Lackman & Flt Lt Thompson..