A midafternoon with fair skies turned into horror for a Midwest City neighborhood on Aug. 25, 1961, when a fully fueled jet fighter crashed and exploded on the doorsteps of several homes.
The pilot of an F-100 jet had ejected safely, but the inferno that burned on the ground engulfed at least eight houses, killing 2-year-old Tibbie Lynn Tuttle and her sister, 4-year-old Judith Ann, and injuring at least seven others, including the Tuttles’ mother and brother.
The fiery explosion of the plane, which had just refueled at Tinker Air Force Base, shook the area in the 300 block of Ferguson Drive at about 3:45 p.m. on a Friday afternoon.
Neighbors as well as emergency workers from Midwest City, Del City, Nichols Hills, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma County and Tinker arrived quickly to help survivors and battle the blaze that engulfed homes and cars.
A story in The Daily Oklahoman about the crash reported 1st Lt. W.H. Barbour had just “re-fueled his jet at Tinker with a mixture of gasoline and kerosene and had taken off when the fire warning light on his instrument panel flashed.”