A pilot was hurt Saturday when his aerobatic kit plane flipped after striking a dirt berm during an emergency landing in an alfalfa field northeast of the Torrington Municipal Airport shortly after takeoff.
The single-engine Van’s RV-3A, owned by Vanguard Squadron, was en route from an airshow in Spanish Fork, Utah, to its headquarters near Sioux Falls, South Dakota, when the accident happened around 4 p.m.
The pilot, whose name has not been released, had taken off after refueling at Torrington Municipal Airport when his plane encountered a mechanical problem less than four minutes later.
“Black smoke was coming out of the plane,” Thomas Bozeman, emergency management coordinator and fire warden for Goshen County, told Cowboy State Daily on Monday. “The plane tried to circle the Torrington airport, but due to its low altitude and engine problem, it came down in a field, hitting a berm and landing on its roof.”
Several residents who witnessed the crash, along with first responders, grabbed the lightweight plane’s tail and flipped the aircraft upright.
The pilot, who appeared to have scratches and cuts but no broken bones, was transported by ambulance to Community Hospital in Torrington, Bozeman said.
(Goshen County Emergency Management) 
(Goshen County Emergency Management)
Four Planes
Bill Law, a former three-term Torrington city council member, said four aerobatic planes passed over his home before the crash. Law’s home sits on the airport’s flight path.
Intrigued, Law, 88, who served as a yeoman in a Navy air squadron, grabbed his cellphone and headed to the airport to snap some photos of the aircraft.
He encountered the four pilots in an airport office after they had bought fuel for their planes.
“I asked them why they chose to refuel in Torrington, and they replied because of the price,” Law said.
Law shot video of the planes taking off and soon noticed something was wrong. The lead plane began descending quickly and then disappeared out of sight.
“It didn’t take a rocket scientist to know that the guy (piloting the plane) went down,” said Law, who jumped into his car and raced to the area where he believed the plane had gone down.
When Law arrived at the alpha field, the plane was upside down and the pilot was inside the aircraft, conscious and bleeding.
Law said he checked on the pilot’s condition on Sunday and was told by Torrington Community Hospital staff that he had been discharged.
Gary Middlebrooks, a pilot with Vanguard Squadron, said he didn’t have details on the possible cause of the mechanical failure and emergency landing.
He added that the pilot has decades of experience, is extremely skilled, and was put in a tough spot.
“It’s obvious that he did a good job getting the airplane on the ground,” said Middlebrooks, who described the Vans RV-3A as a reliable plane. “It was not a good place to land.”
All of the Vanguard Squadron planes are fueled by ethanol. The squadron flies as many as 15 airshows a year, and its pilots have logged more than 3,000 flight hours.
The damaged plane had performed with three other planes in Utah before the crash. The wreckage was transported to the Torrington Municipal Airport.
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the cause of the incident.
