Two warbirds collide above 4,000 spectators at the Wings Over Dallas airshow
At 1:22 p.m. on November 12, 2022, a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra collided in mid-air during the Wings Over Dallas airshow at Dallas Executive Airport. More than 4,000 spectators had gathered for a show timed to Veterans Day commemorations. The P-63, in a descending banked turn onto the runway approach, struck the B-17, the Texas Raiders, on its rear port quarter from above. Both aircraft broke apart and burned. All six aboard were killed: five on the bomber and the fighter's pilot. No one on the ground was hurt.
The crash exposed a gap in American aviation oversight: the FAA had no guidance or requirements for air bosses, the people who direct the sky at air shows. The NTSB's recommendations called for standard operating procedures and air boss evaluations. It was also the Commemorative Air Force's first fatal accident in 17 years, and it took one of the few airworthy B-17s.
QWhat was Daniel Ragan's job on the Navy's version of the B-17?
Ragan was a radio operator. In the 1950s, as a U.S. Navy veteran of the Korean War, he served as a radio operator aboard the PB-1W, the naval variant of the B-17. He was a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, who lived in Dallas. Of the five people aboard the Texas Raiders, his service was the oldest on the record: the next-earliest listed, Terry Barker's Army helicopter flying, began in 1975, more than two decades after Ragan's Navy radio work. He had spent his military years at a radio set inside a close relative of the aircraft that carried him on his last flight.
QWhat air show role had pilot Craig Hutain flown before Dallas?
Hutain was a pilot for the "Tora! Tora! Tora!" air show reenactment of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a performance that put vintage aircraft through staged attack passes before a crowd. He had started flying solo at 17. His professional career ran through Rocky Mountain Airways from 1982 to 1985 and United Airlines from 1985 to 2022, the year of the crash. In Dallas he was the only person aboard the P-63, the third and last fighter in a three-aircraft trail.
QHow rare were the two aircraft that collided over Dallas?
The fighter, registered N6763, was a P-63F-1-BE, and it was one of only two examples of the P-63F variant ever built. The bomber, registered N7227C, was a B-17G-95-DL built by Douglas at Long Beach, and it was one of the few Flying Fortresses still airworthy. So the two aircraft that met over Dallas Executive Airport were a near-unique fighter and a survivor from a very small fleet of flying bombers. The collision removed both from the sky in a single moment, and neither flies again.
