The Dallas County Medical Examiner's Office announcing the confirmation of 6 fatalities. Of the six people who died in the horrific mid-air collision of two World War II-era military planes, we have the names of three. They are Terry Barker, Len Root and Curtis Rowe. All three were crew on the B-17 Flying Fortress, which usually flies with a crew of 4 or 5 people. The other plane was a Bell P-63 Kingcobra. Hank Coates, president and CEO of the Commemorative Air Force saying the P-63 is a “single-piloted fighter type aircraft.”
In video of the mid-air collision, the two vintage planes are seen breaking apart in the sky, then falling to the ground below and immediately bursting into flames. Debris from the two planes fell onto property of the Dallas Executive Airport and was collected by Federal investigators. What spilled onto city property - streets, etc. - was picked up by Dallas Police Department and delivered to
Investigators are surveying the site of the accident both by an drone and a photograph of the scene from the ground. This way they have documentation of the incident site before everything is moved and re-created elsewhere for deeper investigation. The first accident report should be ready in a month or two...and the full investigation should be available in a year to a year and a half.
NTSB's Michael Graham is appealing to all witnesses who took photos or videos to share them with the NTSB.
“They’ll actually be very critical since we don’t have any flight data recorder data or cockpit voice recorders or anything like [those devices],” Graham said. “They’ll be very critical to analyze the collision and also tie that in with the aircraft control recordings to determine why the two aircraft collided and to determine, basically, the how and why this accident happened and then eventually, hopefully, maybe make some safety recommendations to prevent it from happening in the future.”
photo:Getty
Photo: Getty Images