Dragsix, I was in the tower (weather observation deck) for that launch. We knew something was wrong about halfway down the runway. The plane was laboring really hard, rose to about 25 feet then fell back onto the runway and broke in half. Caught fire immediately and shortly later the bombs began going off. The fire trucks who were always on standby whenever there was a mission launch, had to back away every time there was an explosion. They would pull back up and spray foam until another one would go off. No firefighters on the ground and they basically had to let it burn itself out. It was amazing how fast the engineers got the runway back open. Naha took the load for awhile. Very long shift that night.
