On Friday December 1, 1961, at age 29, he was the pilot of a flaming United States Air Force F-100 Super Sabre jet fighter. He steered it until the last possible instant to guide it away from residential areas and workmen on a new bridge. He escaped uninjured, as his plane plunged out of control into the Niagara River gorge. The Air Force plane screamed into the Niagara Gorge and exploded, narrowly missing 15 steelworkers on scaffolding located on top of the bridge arch. As many as 40 construction workmen were in the area. The plane crashed near the American end of the Queenston-Lewiston International Bridge.