Reporter-News Archives

Thursday, February 19, 1998

Crash survivor, wife remember what it was like

By ROY A. JONES II / Abilene Reporter-News

If anyone knows what was going through the minds of four Dyess Air Force Base crewmen when they ejected from their crippled B-1B bomber Wednesday, it's Bill Price.

Price, a retired Dyess officer who now teaches business at Howard Payne University in Brownwood, was one of the three survivors of America's first B-1B crash in 1987. Three fellow crewmen he had flown with for several years died in that crash.

Janet Price, now a third grader teacher at Wylie Elementary School, certainly understands how wives of the crewmen involved in Wednesday's crash feel, too.

"It was several hours after the crash before I knew that Bill was OK," she said Wednesday. "It's not something you want any other military wives to have to go through."

Mrs. Price said she "prayed earnestly" from the time a somber group of Dyess officials came to her home and told her of the early morning crash in Colorado, until word came in the afternoon that then-Maj. Price had survived.

The crew was flying a low level mission in Colorado when their plane struck a bird about 600 feet above the ground.

Accident investigators later said the 15-to-20-pound North America white pelican struck the speeding plane "like a bowling ball at the speed of sound."

Price called it "an act of God where the bird hit." The accident report said the bird tore through a wing and ripped apart critical hydraulic, electrical and fuel lines, starting a fire and making it impossible for the pilot to control the plane. The Air Force subsequently "hardened" the sensitive area on the remaining B-1s.

Price, then 43, cheated death when the backup function on his ejection seat corrected the initial malfunction and blasted him safely from the plane.

But even after his parachute opened, Price said he wasn't certain he was going to get back to earth alive.

Unlike Wednesday's incident, in which the fliers came down about 10 miles from where their B-1 crashed, Price was falling, then floating to earth almost in the fireball of his plane.

"It's really ironic that there you are out of the plane, your ejection seat works and you're coming down in the chute and you open your eyes and you've got these huge chunks of metal falling all around you and you think, 'Oh, my Lord, I'm going to get hit by a big hunk of metal and killed,' " he recalled.

"As soon as my chute popped open and I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was the fireball," he said.

He also remembers breathing "a little prayer" that he wouldn't come down astraddle a barbed wife fence.

"It's funny how your mind wanders back in that situation, but I remembered getting stuck on one when I was a little-bitty kid. It was a most uncomfortable situation," he said.

Price landed safely about one-half mile from where the plane hit belly-first and exploded, scattering debris over 50 acres.

He was not seriously injured and returned to regular duty as soon as the accident investigation was completed. He continued to fly for several years, but not as regularly as he did before the accident. He was the 7th Wing's inspector general when he retired three years ago, as a lieutenant colonel.

"You get real religious in a hurry" after living through a plane crash, Price said.

"When I was on the chopper (rescue helicopter), I remember looking out at the really beautiful parts of the Colorado countryside and thinking about God and how really temporary we are; what a short time we have here on earth," he said.

"You just don't think about that every day until something kind of knocks some sense into you."