1988 Germany Air Show Disaster Passed off as Recent Russian Crash

No, the viral video is not of the Russian air crash. It is of the 1988 Ramstein air show disaster in Germany.

A viral video falsely claimed that it is from a Russian air show incident.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

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CLAIM

A viral video on social media claims that during a Russian air show held yesterday, the Italian air show team had an accident. The claim shared with the video reads:

‘Russia Air Show
Yesterday at the Russian Air Show, the Italian air show team had an accident. The plane collided in the air and destroyed ten planes. It was more terrible than the air battle.’

Several social media users have shared the video on Facebook with the same claim.

The video is viral on Facebook.(Photo: Facebook screenshot)

The Quint received a query about the claim made by the video via its WhatsApp helpline.

TRUE OR FALSE?

The claim with which the video has been shared is false. Neither is this the Russian air show, nor was it held yesterday. The video is actually from the Ramstein air disaster that took place in 1988 in Germany.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We did a frame-to-frame analysis using InVID, a video verification tool, and then reverse-searched each frame on Yandex. One of the posts on Yandex suggested that it is the Ramstein airshow crash in West Germany.

One of the posts suggest that the video is from the Ramstein airshow.(Photo: Yandex screenshot)

Then, we did a YouTube search using keywords ‘ramstein,’ ‘air,’ ‘show’ which led us to a 4-minute video that was published nine years ago and is titled ‘Ramstein airshow crash in West Germany 1988.’

YouTube search led us to a video that was published nine years ago.(Photo Courtesy: YouTube screenshot)

This video is identical to the one which is viral -- even down to the same narration.

In fact, an article published by The Sun has a similar video -- but it is shot from a different angle. The article says that the video is of the 1988 Ramstein air disaster in which 70 people were killed, while over 1,000 were left injured.

The Sun’s article mentions that the video is from the Ramstein air disaster.(Photo: The Sun screenshot)

On 28 August 2018, survivors and the families of those who were killed during an air show at the US Air Base in Ramstein in Germany, honoured 30 years of the said tragedy, reported the Associated Press. A religious programme was organised to commemorate the death of 70 people who died when three Italian stunt planes collided in 1988.

(With inputs from AP)

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