Given the tragic nature of what happened at Sunday's performance at the Moose Jaw air show, I felt it was appropriate to include an 'eye witness' account of it, from someone that was there. My good friend Sean attended this tragedy, and provided for my reading, the following account of what he saw:

Day 2 was the day Bobby Younkin and Jimmy Franklin died and yes, we saw the whole thing. The beginning of their “Masters of Disaster” performance was pretty good, they chased each other in circles and made artistic loops in the air with their smoke streams, but then they just went nuts; randomly swooping at each other, doing random barrel rolls and somersaults. The air was quite still so their smoke and exhaust just hung in the air until it was almost difficult to see them when they were directly in front of us. Then the rocket truck arrived on the runway and was just about to go for a few burns up and back in front of us when the crash happened. My father and I were looking at the truck until we heard the “pop” sound. We looked up and saw a ball of flame and black smoke cascading away in two different directions while the 3rd plane in the act continued on to the west. He must have had quite a surprise when he turned around and couldn’t see his buddies anymore…just black smoke. A piece of the one plane’s flaming wreckage almost hit the jet truck while it was coasting down the runway and it had to swerve to miss the wreckage. Moments later fire trucks headed out onto the field as well as the rescue chopper. And yes, as reports in the news indicate, the crowd fell amazingly silent and fast. You could only hear kids babbling around you as every adult fell to silence in disbelief of what had just happened. Jimmy Franklin had just performed with his son moments earlier doing their wing-walking routine (Jimmy would fly and his son did stunts on the wings and shook his father’s hand in mid-air while upside down – his last handshake with his father as it turned out). His son was up in the tower narrating as his father collided with Bobby Younkin’s plane. It’s not known who hit who but from the look of the video and what I remember, Jimmy came up fast and hard from below in his jet plane and clipped Bobby’s prop plane (only Jimmy had a jet engine, the others just had regular propeller engines). Bobby’s plane didn’t even seem to be going that fast when Jimmy zoomed up through the smoke and haze and they hit. It might have been a mechanical problem or medical problem which befell one of the pilots, but it could just as easily been a simple problem of reduced visibility. I mean…at high speeds like that in the jet plane you must have all kinds of smoke streams careening over the front windshield – Jimmy probably couldn’t tell exactly how close he was to Bobby until it was too late. Anyway…it makes you think when you see that happen right in front of you. …and as we stood there in shock, what appeared to be Jimmy’s son went zipping by on a motorcycle across the field to find his father and confirm the worst. But you could tell from the amount of smoke and flame there was no chance anyone could survive. The air show was cancelled within maybe 2 minutes and we were all asked to leave in an orderly fashion…which everyone did. I looked all around me and there were very few smiles left on anyone’s face. A woman and her family with two kids broke into tears just ahead of us…and bad. She must have known one of the pilots dearly because she was crying hard and her nose was running. Yup…in a word it was “horrible.” I would have liked to see the Snow Birds perform as they were up next, but given the circumstances nobody minded missing that opportunity.