Word: ramstein
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Britain authorities decided to go ahead with this week's Farnborough air show despite calls for cancellation of the biennial display, one of the world's biggest. British officials said they were confident their safety rules would prevent an accident like the one at Ramstein. France too will proceed with scheduled shows because its rules, according to an air force statement, "are very rigorous." Spanish officials said they were "studying" whether to cancel a joint Spanish-American aerial display in Zaragoza next month, but it will probably...
...Italy the Ramstein crash sent the nation into mourning, but also created a furious debate over the use of the Frecce Tricolori in air shows. The Italian air force restricted future appearances to nonaerobatic flyovers at military functions. Officials in Fribourg, Switzerland, quietly disinvited the Italians to an air show this weekend...
Back in Washington both the Air Force, with its Thunderbirds flying team, and the Navy, with its Blue Angels, were quick to assert that a Ramstein-type catastrophe could not happen in the U.S. and to defend such demonstration flights. "I don't know that the risk is too high," said Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci. "We have crashes in training every day." In all, 22 Blue Angels have been killed in crashes since 1946, and 19 Thunderbirds since 1953. But with thousands of air shows since World War II, no spectators have died in accidents involving military teams...
...West Germany, however, the public's confidence in allied air forces was on the ebb even before the Ramstein disaster. In recent years West Germans have grown increasingly intolerant of low-altitude exercises by NATO fighters, mostly F-16s, whose pilots must practice the ground-hugging tactics they would use in battle. In the past seven years, 20 F-16s have crashed in West Germany, several in populated areas and one a bare ten seconds' flying time from a nuclear power reactor near Landau. Three aircraft crashed on a single day in July. For the past three years demonstrators have...
Scholz's declarations raise the delicate question of whether a West German Defense Minister can decide what is and what is not part of NATO's defense role. But as a NATO diplomat in Bonn noted, "We are in an emotionally charged situation." Nowhere more so than at Ramstein, where the blackened remains of the Italian jet lay crumpled late last week amid abandoned picnic tables, uneaten potato salads and indelible memories of nightmare...