25th Anniversary Thunder Over Michigan Event Ends Prematurely

For more than twenty-years, crowds have thrilled to Thunder Over Michigan, a gala event counted among the U.S.’s premier air-shows.

Regrettably, the event’s 25th anniversary was marred by the loss of a Soviet-Era MiG-23 (NATO designation Flogger)—a third-generation, variable-geometry fighter aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau. Over a 1967-1985 production-run, over five-thousand specimens of the MiG-23 were built, thereby distinguishing the machine as history’s most-produced variable-geometry aircraft.

The Sunday, 13 August mishap, the cause of which remains unknown, saw the MiG-23’s two occupants eject from the aircraft as it traversed the airspace over Ypsilanti, Michigan’s Willow Run Airport (YIP). The unpiloted jet came almost immediately to ground, impacting a number of unoccupied vehicles in the parking lot of Van Buren Township’s Waverly on the Lake Apartments. By dint of extraordinary good fortune, no ground injuries were reported and the aircraft’s two pilots were rescued from Bellville Lake.

Spectator Marsha Bogardus, who was enjoying the air-show with her children from the vicinity of Belleville Lake, captured the pilots’ ejections on video.

“We heard these huge booms,” Bogardus recounted. “I started recording and saw the two pilots eject. It scared my kids and everyone was freaking out. It dropped like a bullet, straight-down near an apartment complex we live by. Not sure where it landed.”

The MiG-23’s pilot and the individual occupying the aircraft’s aft station—known in official military parlance as a Combat Systems Officer (CSO) and colloquially as a backseater—both ejected successfully from the aircraft and landed safely, albeit soggily, under canopy.

Michigan’s Wayne County Airport Authority set forth: “While it did not appear they [the Mig-23’s occupants] sustained any significant injuries, first-responders transported the pair to a nearby hospital as a precaution.”

The aviators, after reportedly being fished from Bellville Lake, were conveyed to Superior Township’s St. Joseph’s Hospital.

Witness Mark McCulloch, 49, stated: “A guy was pointing and said ‘Oh my God,’ which caused me to turn. I had my Nikon D-800 with a 600 mm lens [and] that’s what I saw. ... There was no loud noises or indication that I witnessed.”

Respondents to the incident included officers of the Van Buren Township Police Department and county sheriff’s deputies, who blocked roads along Interstate 94 and directed air-show attendees away from the area.

Thunder Over Michigan’s 25th anniversary was planned and executed to a theme of Greatest of Thunder. The event was to have featured some 55 modern and historic military aircraft and included a USAF F-22 Raptor flight demonstration.

Contending she’d communicated with authorities vis-à-vis the accident, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell, (Democrat, Michigan) set forth in a press release: “It appears at this time that both pilots are safe, and there has been no human injury. Completing comprehensive physical assessments to ensure everyone’s safety is top priority right now.”

Witnesses Prentiss Small, 32, of Detroit reported: “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, and I’ve been to more than 15 airshows. I went to school at Willow Run Airport to study aviation technology and my father was an aircraft mechanic.”

The accident compelled organizers to stop the air-show several hours short of its planned run-time and prevail upon showgoers to vacate the airport and the surrounding area.

The National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration have undertaken investigations of the occurrence. Assuming the Board adheres to convention, a preliminary NTSB report on the event will be issued in a period of time measurable in weeks.

FMI: www.ntsb.gov