The Netherlands, 9.50 a. m., 11 February 1992: A few minutes after take-off from the nearby Twente Air Force Base, an F-16 fighter plane gets into trouble, tries to turn around and return to the base, but crashes into the residential area of Hasseler Es in the town of Hengelo. Houses catch fire, cars are destroyed, summerhouses and sheds are ruined. Total material damage:€ 1 million. Plus an F-16 of course – a multiple of that amount. Fortunately, there were no personal injuries; even the pilot was saved by his ejection seat at the last minute. A “divine miracle”, according to Hengelo's mayor, Lemstra.

The accident prompted an immediate debate on the risks of military flights over densely populated areas. Voices were raised demanding to closure the Twente Air Force base. Part of the discussion concerned the cause of the accident. Was the engine failure caused by a technical defect, fuel problems, or could it simply be a matter of a bird flying into the intake compressor? And what about the pilot? Did he act properly? Shouldn't he have flown straight ahead after he had received the first signals of engine trouble from his dashboard instruments, instead of making a sharp turn to the right in order to return to the base as soon as possible, a move which brought him above the stricken area? Or, simply another possibility, might not the accident have been caused by the lack of radar control, since that very morning the ground station was out of order due to technical maintenance?

This was the twenty-fifth F-16 to crash since this aircraft was first deployed by the Dutch armed forces in 1979. According to the Air Force's public relations department, 40% of these crashes were attributable to technical troubles; 60% to human failure. But what is technical and what is human in this case? Is the absence of ground radar, due to maintenance work, a technical or a human affair? If, as it appears, engines can be destroyed by flying birds, why can't human beings take that into account? And when the engine fails, this is manifested to the flying pilot as a technical defect, but couldn't it have been foreseen by maintenance personnel at the airbase, thus making them or their military superiors accountable?