Re Roush... I was walking away from the Vintage camping area with my girlfriend (her first time to Airventure)... lots of planes in the pattern as usual. Noticed the Beech jet and thought it odd that they had it in the pattern for 18... normally they put all the jets on 9/27. Anyway, it overshot base to final; I expected a go-around. Then it veered into what appeared to be a 50+ degree bank to try and correct... Couldn't believe my eyes-- that's a typical 10-hour student pilot mistake and I thought sure a jet pilot (didn't know who was in it) would never do that.
Expected a go around. It didn't happen. Nor did the power come up. And it was sinking and slow.
In my head I projected the landing/impact point... and it was about 300 feet from where we were standing. Grabbed girlfiend's hand and said "Let's GO!" We trotted off and she said "What's the matter?" I said "This is not going to end well." I didn't see the impact, as I was too busy trying to get further away-- the airplane was very close to the ground with no power and one wing dipped about 45 degrees and I was damned certain it was going to explode on impact and I was concerned that flaming debris and/or jet fuel could find us at our distance.
Heard the BANG of the impact, but no explosion. Stopped and turned around just in time to see the thing skidding along the ground and spin around 180 degrees (he had gotten the wings fairly level before hitting the ground). Back of fuselage was cracked, and the engines were now running at full power. I thought sure that fuel was leaking and next we'd have a fire from that. Luckily that didn't happen. Emergency crews were on the scene fairly fast. We kept moving away-- against the crowd of people trying to get closer. I thought it much more practical to get away from the area for any emergency vehicles, etc. that may need to get there, plus I thought it in bad taste to gawk, frankly.
Learned it was Roush the next day. I'm not going to add to all the speculation out there about the cause, I just tell people what I saw. Investigators, etc. will come up with the why it happened.
In short, we were lucky that this accident was not a LOT worse. If it had happened a day or so earlier he would have hit parked aircraft that were there waiting for the grounds to dry out so they could be parked elsewhere. If you do a search for images on Google, you'll see some that show the high bank angle just before impact.
TM
