Ramstein

Today is the eighteenth anniversary of the world's worst air show disaster. I guess you are wondering why I am mentioning this in tonight's update. The reason why is I could have been there on that day.

In 1987 and 1988 my family spent the summer holidays in Germany staying at an American air force base where my uncle worked in the military police.

The bases were strange in that the currency spent was in US Dollars and the food was also from the USA. Fortunately for me, so were the toys!

I wanted a skateboard so we travelled across a series of bases across West Germany in the search for a suitable board. One of our stops was at the Ramstein base in Kaiserslautern.

We failed in the attempt to find a skateboard at Ramstein but we were treated to seeing some aircraft performing in the air. They had made a giant M with their gas and I shouted, 'Look, it's the McDonalds sign!' We watched the planes for a while and were informed that they were an Italian air force and the following day they were going to hold an air display on the base.

We arrived home that Saturday evening with my new skateboard and we were met with a decision by our parents.

My sister, my cousins and I were asked whether we wanted to go to Phantasia Land the German theme park or to see the air show at Ramstein.

There was no competition - we wanted to go to the theme park. And so we did.

The air show turned into a disaster as three planes were attempting to make the bottom of a heart and collided with each other landing on the crowd and killing sixty-seven spectators. 346 others were seriously injured.

The heart must have been what they were practising the day previous when I commented that they were making the M on the McDonalds logo.

I look back and wonder what could have happened had our parents pulled rank and we were forced to go to the air show instead of Phantasia Land.