20% Loss

Maria de Jesus Victoriano, a peasant woman of Carvalhinho, was on her way to the top of 2,800-ft. Mount Carvalho one day last week to gather hay. "I was looking at the sky and hoping the sun would drive the fog away," she said later. "Then I heard a great hissing and roaring overhead. I thought the mountain below me had exploded." For the next few seconds, shock after shock rent the earth all around her, sending ribbons and streams of flame and debris in all directions. "It was terrible," she said, "but the silence that followed was more terrible still. The birds sang no more and all around me they lay dead."

Unhurt herself, Maria had just witnessed Portugal's grimmest air disaster. Shortly before she heard them roaring above her head, twelve U.S.-built Thunderjets of the Portuguese air force left the Ota air base to take part in an air force show to the north at Coimbra. None of them could see the fog-shrouded mountain on which Maria stood beneath them. As they hurtled forward in tight formation, the four top planes cleared the peaks without harm. The eight planes below them plowed head-on into the mountain, killing all eight pilots and reducing Portugal's jet strength in one blow by 20%.

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