Ongoing History: A plane almost fell on top of him

Over the decades, a number of rock stars have been killed in plane crashes: Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ozzy’s guitarist Randy Rhodes, Stevie Ray Vaughn, members of Lynyrd Skynyrd–I could go on.  The thing all these people have in common is they were in the planes that crashed.  This is different. 

When he was in Depeche Mode, keyboardist Alan Wilder was almost killed when a plane almost fell on him.  On September 1, 1994, he was driving through rural Scotland when an RAF jet fighter went out of control and crashed about 200 yards away from where he was.  Both pilots were killed. 

The impact left a crater more than 20 yards across and flaming shrapnel was blown all over the place.  At one point in its crash dive, the jet was less than 50 feet over Alan’s head. 

Had he been just 10 seconds further along the road, Alan would have been hit.