Crap. I thought that the name was familiar. That happened the year after I was posted back to Canada, and a couple of weeks before I went back to Lahr on leave. I used to go to Baden for Happy Hour once per month, to see guys that I knew and for a change of scenery from the Lahr Mess. I don't think that I ever met him, though, but I don't remember a lot from those Friday nights anyway - one of the exceptions being the 439 Squadron wives' Happy Hour uniforms.
We lost one F18 during my time there, but both guys (a dual on a full-card test flight) ejected safely, after the aircraft descended into cloud while uncontrollable.
The machine lawn-darted between two houses on the edge of a small town. Fortunately, the almost-full fuel load did not explode, and nobody on the ground was hurt. A farmer sitting on his toilet in the left-hand house (looking in from the outside of the town) was perhaps the luckiest, when one of the seats blasted its way through both his bathroom ceiling and floor on its way to the basement. He was quoted as saying, in his interview with the Polizei, "That's when I really shat". Edit: This was the fourth one listed at http://www.ejection-history.org.uk/Aircraft_by_Type/CF-18/cf_18_hornet.htm
One of the ejectees hung up in small power lines. His shroud lines pulled the wires together and short-circuited them in a shower of sparks. His partner, somewhat higher up and enroute to being caught in a tree, saw this and thought that he had been fried.
I saw both of them in the Mess in Baden the following Friday at Happy Hour, celebrating but still unable to turn their heads.
We lost two guys in a T33 that struck trees on a hill some distance to the north, lost a tip tank and a few other bits, then thumped into a field on a slightly lower hill and detonated. We flew the Flight Safety team up in three Kiowas. Even when we arrived several hours later, the burnt fuel smell was noticeable, and the bodies were still exactly where they ended up. The centrifugal-flow engine, being somewhat spherical, had bounced and rolled for quite a distance. That was not a good couple of days. Edit: The aircraft was 133315 on 7 April 1987, according to http://www.rwrwalker.ca/CAF_T33_detailed_list.htm. The day started out weirdly amusing, for me, and then got worse. We were at the crash site until almost dusk, then retired to a good Gasthaus that somebody had booked. Alcohol Therapy was employed by most, if not all, that night.
Some of us were lucky, and some were not.
Also added: http://thisisme.ca/439squadron/TIGER/Honour-Leuty.htm
http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol15/no4/page30-eng.asp ("CFIT" is "Controlled Flight Into Terrain")
