'False start' sparked pilot's Fenway gaffe
A false start in the playing of the national anthem during the Boston Red Sox opener at Fenway Park on Tuesday lead to a Vermont Air National Guard F-16 pilot performing an unwanted barrel roll.
"There was a false start, a 'hack,' caused by a drum roll before the anthem," said Lt. Col. Lloyd Goodrow, spokesman for the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Fighter Wing. "When the controller on the ground at Fenway realized that, we had to put the pilots back into a figure-eight holding pattern."
The unexpected delay forced the F-16s into a second figure-eight pattern much closer to the stadium and this threw off the timing of the flyover for the four pilots.
"He was going faster than the rest of the formation was going," Goodrow said. "Then, it seemed the tempo of the music slowed down, so the leader in the formation slowed down. By then, the pilot was approaching faster than he needed to."
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