58-1020                27 YB/RB-58A           n/a

Eventually modernized/upgraded to operational aircraft for SAC; assigned to 43rd BW; destroyed 12/27/61 -- 4.3 n. miles NE of Camp Cole, MO.; cause of accident was engine flameout due to ruptured fuel manifold during normal flight; AF pilot Capt. Clarence Montgomery (survived); AF nav/bombardier Capt. Louis Hughes (survived); AF DSO was Capt. John Roddy (survived).

I enjoyed your record of B-58 mishaps.  I flew as navigator with the 364^th Bomb Squadron, 305^th Bomb Wing at Bunker Hill / Grissom AFB.  I noticed one missing event which perhaps you can find details on.  Maybe it did not fit your criteria for bailout/egress, but it was a loss of the DSO, Capt. Jim Estrada when a starter turbine engaged and disintegrated at mach 1.7..

It would have been about 1964.  I don’t have the tail number, but we were flying a test hop without the pod following heavy engine maintenance.  One of the tasks that day was to accelerate to mach 2, using the supersonic corridor that went right over Bunker Hill.  The pilot had begun our acceleration.  At 600 knots indicated, he began his climb and continued acceleration.  At 47,000 feet and mach 1.7, there was an explosive decompression.  The number three starter turbine had engaged and oversped to disintegration.  Most of the turbine pieces went out the bottom of number 3 engine, but one small pie shaped wedge came inborn piercing the forward main fuel tank, coming through the third man (DSO) right instrument panel, right through the DSO’s heart and embedding in the left side of his cockpit wall.

That piece of shrapnel, when it pierced Capt. Estrada, also pulled his “green apple” emergency oxygen release.  All of the crewmembers were on “hot mike”.  Besides the quick fog of explosive decompression, the intercom had a loud rushing air noise (from the green apple oxygen in the DSO’s mask).  The pilot knew we had a problem, but had no engine instrument indications to tell him anything was wrong with the engines.  We heard one long groan from the DSO.  There was just squeeze room between the Nav and DSO positions.  I asked the Pilot if I could squeeze back and see about Jim.  The supersonic corridor where this occurred was right over the field and since we had lost cabin pressure, the pilot was in an emergency deceleration and descent.  He told me to stay put.  We did not know of the major fuel leak in the forward main fuel tank until we were on the ground.  We stopped on the runway and were surrounded by fire emergency crews and well-foamed down.  JP4 fuel was streaming down from the forward main fuel tank like Niagra Falls.  Once on the ground, I DID crawl back to see about Jim.  It was obvious that he was killed instantly by the wedge of turbine.  Emergency crews got Jim out and to the hospital, but we already knew that he did not survive.

There was one like accident without loss of life on takeoff by a 43^rd Bomb Wing B-58 taking off with the center pod.  When the starter turbine engaged and disintegrated on takeoff roll, the shrapnel pierced the big center fuel pod and looked like a giant afterburner going down the runway.  There were no fatalities and the aircraft was flown back for a safe landing.

John  T.  Burch, Col., USAF (Ret.)