75 years ago on this day, on a Saturday afternoon in 1951, two Boeing B-47B Stratojet bomber test aircraft collided mid-air, five miles to the northeast of the Boeing plant in Wichita, killing all four aircrew on board.
One of the B-47 jets experienced a malfunction with its front main landing gear during the test flight out of the Boeing Wichita Plant. The control tower asked the other jet to do a fly-past for a visual check.
When the gear could not be clearly seen, the tower told the second, accompanying B-47 to move in close underneath to inspect the undercarriage. During this close underside inspection, the two aircraft collided at 2,000 feet. Both planes went into a spin, crashed, and exploded.
The B-47 planes at that time did not have ejection seats for bailout; the pilots did not have time to get out of the airplanes to use their parachutes.
