1965 USAF KC-135 Wichita crash
U S Air Force Boeing KC-135 · Loss of control due to malfunction of rudder control system
From McConnell Air Force Base (IAB) to McConnell Air Force Base
Event
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Unknown
- Event fatalities
- 30 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- Occupants
- 7
- Survivors
- 0
- InjuriesFatal: death within 30 days. Serious: over 48 hours in hospital within a week, most broken bones, severe bleeding, nerve or organ damage, or serious burns. Minor: anything less. Glossary
- 27 · all on the ground
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- Military
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Boeing KC-135
- Aircraft type
- Boeing KC-135
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- USAF501
- Operator
- U S Air Force
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From McConnell Air Force Base (IAB)To McConnell Air Force Base
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Not recorded
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Uncontrolled descent
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Uncontrolled collision with ground/water
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Destroyed
Cause areas
No findings designated as a cause are recorded in the NTSB data yet.
Approximate · Coordinates from the Wikipedia article; not checked against an investigation report.
From the Wikipedia article
On 16 January 1965, a U.S. Air Force Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker crashed in the central United States, in a neighborhood in north-eastern Wichita, Kansas, after taking off from McConnell Air Force Base. This resulted in the deaths of all seven crew members on board the aircraft and an additional twenty-three people on the ground.
This accident is the deadliest aviation disaster to occur in Kansas. It is also the second-deadliest aircraft accident in the United States involving victims on the ground, after the Green Ramp disaster in 1994, which killed 24 people on the ground.
Accident details
At 9:28 a.m. CST (3:28 p.m. UTC) on Saturday, 16 January 1965, a Boeing KC-135A-BN Stratotanker, serial number 57-1442, took off from the McConnell Air Force Base and gained very little altitude. During this time, the aircraft began to experience a large amount of yaw, and attempted to return to the airport. The crew then began to dump large quantities of fuel from the aircraft's refueling tanks. Shortly after this, the aircraft made a hard bank to the left, and began to enter a roll. Unable to recover, the aircraft crashed into a suburban neighborhood at the intersection of Piatt and 20th Street, just three minutes after take-off. The site is several blocks west of Wichita State University.
The aerial refueling aircraft was loaded with 31000 gal of jet fuel, and the crash resulted in a large explosion and subsequent fire, which engulfed dozens of homes. The accident killed all seven crew members on the aircraft and an additional twenty-three people on the ground. In addition, at least twenty-seven people on the ground sustained injuries, three of which were serious.
It was reported that the crew entry door was jettisoned and a B-52 Stratofortress bomber, which took off prior to the KC-135, may have blown a detached drag chute from an F-105 Thunderchief against the departing aircraft. These factors may have contributed to the crash. Recently un-redacted portions of the accident report indicate that the parachute ingested into the Number 1 engine was that of the crew member who attempted to bail out through the crew entry door. His body was found about 200 feet from the impact crater.
The aircraft and crew were based at Clinton-Sherman Air Force Base in west central Oklahoma, about 200 mi to the southwest.
Text from the Wikipedia article “1965 USAF KC-135 Wichita crash” (revision 1340404398, retrieved 2026-09-18) by its authors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Extracted as plain text: references, tables, images and some sections are left out. Read the article
NTSB remarks
CRASHED 6 MINUTES AFTER TAKEOFF. ENTERED DESCENDING LEFT TURN AT 1000 FT & CRASHED. DEST 14 HOUSES
NTSB's remark from its 1962–1981 archive, as recorded (abbreviated, at most 98 characters): the archive has no narrative
Sources
Wikipedia article: 1965 USAF KC-135 Wichita crash
- Revision
- 1340404398 · 2026-02-25 · retrieved 2026-09-18
- Wikidata
- Q28450144
- Licence
- Text CC BY-SA 4.0, by the article's authors; Wikidata CC0; town positions GeoNames (CC BY 4.0)
NTSB record
- Event ID
- 19650116P005454
- Case number
- Unknown
- Dataset
- historical-pre1982
- Source SHA-256
- abe1a933b4b73583d61684309f7f0610c281e3c1de3537c6471bf2a98ba6481d
Where each value comes from
- Record
- Wikipedia article "1965 USAF KC-135 Wichita crash" (page 52792841, revision 1340404398); merged with NTSB case NTSB19650116P005454 (PRE1982 tblFirstHalf (one row per aircraft, grouped by date, place and time))
- Date
- NTSB record NTSB19650116P005454: PRE1982 DATE_OCCURRENCE
- Place and country
- Wikipedia infobox: site; country from NTSB record NTSB19650116P005454
- Map position
- Wikipedia: Wikipedia article coordinates
- Aircraft, operator and route
- NTSB record NTSB19650116P005454: PRE1982 REGIST_NO, ACFT_MAKE, ACFT_MODEL; gaps from Wikipedia infobox: aircraft type, registration, operator, origin and destination; route airports from the linked airport articles' Wikidata codes (OurAirports)
- Operation
- operator named as an armed force or military unit in the infobox
- Fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19650116P005454: PRE1982 TOTAL_ABRD_FATAL of each aircraft, plus people on the ground and others outside the aircraft
- Ground fatalities
- NTSB record NTSB19650116P005454: events.inj_f_grnd
- Summary
- Wikipedia infobox: summary
Source notes (4)
- One occurrence in two sources, merged: the Wikipedia article "1965 USAF KC-135 Wichita crash" and NTSB case NTSB19650116P005454, matched by the same aircraft maker and place and date. For this US event the NTSB's values are used where the two differ; each value names its source.
- From NTSB's 1962-1981 archive (PRE1982), which holds at most a short remark (98 characters, abbreviated) instead of a narrative; the accident type, phase of flight, causes and conditions are NTSB's codes, decoded as the archive defines them.
- Unreviewed: it failed the site's consistency check (see the summary). Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status.
- The operation category is mapped from the archive's operator and operation codes and has not been reviewed.