Um acidente rodoviário grave provocou uma vítima mortal, na tarde deste sábado, 1 de agosto, na Estrada Nacional 5 (EN5), no concelho de Palmela.
O sinistro, classificado como uma colisão rodoviária, ocorreu pelas 15h19 ao quilómetro 17,836 da EN5, no troço que liga Rio Frio ao Poceirão, mais concretamente na zona de Forninho, na União das Freguesias de Poceirão e Marateca. Devido à gravidade da ocorrência e para permitir os trabalhos das equipas de emergência, a estrada esteve totalmente cortada ao trânsito.
Para o local foram mobilizados de imediato os meios de socorro da Península de Setúbal. Segundo as informações operacionais, o teatro de operações contou com a intervenção de 9 operacionais, apoiados por 4 viaturas, maioritariamente dos corpos de bombeiros.
O tráfego na zona permanece interrompido por tempo indeterminado enquanto decorrem os procedimentos habituais e a limpeza da via, recomendando-se aos condutores a máxima precaução e a utilização de rotas alternativas.
Por: Dino Frazão Site: OSMONHACAS.COM Data: 1 de agosto de 2026
Uma colisão frontal entre duas viaturas ligeiras de passageiros provocou três feridos, este sábado, 1 de agosto, na Estrada Nacional 109 (EN109), na localidade de Seixo de Mira, no concelho de Mira.
O sinistro ocorreu ao quilómetro 79,555, logo a seguir à rotunda que dá acesso à zona industrial de Mira, no sentido Mira. Devido à gravidade da ocorrência e para permitir as operações de socorro e limpeza da via, o trânsito esteve totalmente cortado nos dois sentidos.
O acidente mobilizou de imediato vários meios de socorro para o local. Segundo as informações recolhidas, o alerta ativou um total de 15 operacionais, apoiados por 6 viaturas, maioritariamente dos corpos de bombeiros da região.
À chegada ao teatro de operações, as equipas de emergência encontraram três vítimas: dois homens, com idades compreendidas entre os 49 e os 70 anos, e uma mulher também de 70 anos. Todos receberam assistência médica e, até ao momento, o tráfego na zona permanece congestionado, pelo que se recomenda aos automobilistas a escolha de caminhos alternativos.
Por: Dino Frazão Site: OSMONHACAS.COM Data: 1 de agosto de 2026
Lt. Col. William Henry Rankin was a decorated US Marine Corps fighter pilot who flew combat missions in World War II and the Korean War. His greatest ordeal, however, came in peacetime.
On July 26, 1959, he ejected from an F-8 Crusader straight into a massive thunderstorm. And he lived to tell the tale.
The Vought F-8 Crusader was a single-engine, supersonic, carrier-based air-superiority fighter designed for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Known as the “Last of the Gunfighters,” it was the final American fighter built with guns as its primary armament at a time when missiles were rapidly taking over. The aircraft entered service in 1957.
In May 1957, Rankin took command of Marine Fighter Squadron 122 (VMF-122). The following year, it became the first Marine squadron to operate the F-8 Crusader.
In 1959, he catapulted to fame for surviving what seemed like an impossible incident with the Crusader.
The Story Of Rankin’s Riding A Thunderstorm
On the afternoon of July 26, 1959, Rankin led a two-ship flight with wingman Lt. Herbert Nolan from Naval Air Station South Weymouth, Massachusetts, back to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, South Carolina.
During the flight, the pilots encountered a large cumulonimbus thunderstorm.
Typically, thunderstorms pose severe threats to fighter jets, including extreme turbulence, powerful updrafts and downdrafts, hail, lightning, icing, and torrential rain. So, fighter pilots are trained to climb above the storm to prevent damage to their aircraft.
The F-8 Crusader’s strong climb performance and high service ceiling of about 50,000 feet made this a practical choice for Rankin on that fateful day.
Rankin climbed his F-8 fighter jet to 47,000 feet at a speed of Mach 0.82 over a massive cumulonimbus cloud that peaked at about 45,000 feet.
While on this quest, he suddenly heard a loud, unprecedented bump and rumble from the aircraft’s engine. He instantly knew something was wrong with his jet.
The engine immediately stopped producing power, a bit of bad news that was delivered to Rankin by a bright fire warning light.
Acting swiftly to arrest the threat, Rankin immediately pulled the lever to deploy auxiliary power, but instead of saving his jet, it snapped in his hand.
Lt. Col William Rankin (Via X)
At this point, Lt. Col Rankin knew he had to eject, which was a formidable challenge without a pressure suit at that altitude.
As soon as he ejected and touched what is believed to be -58 to -60 degree air, his body started to fail. The veteran fighter pilot who had braved enemies in the wars he fought through his career was now struggling for survival—he suffered frostbite, the decompression caused his stomach to bloat, and he started to bleed from his mouth, nose, and ears. The only respite, at least initially, was that he had an emergency oxygen supply.
The chances of survival were grim, something Rankin was fully aware of.
“I was convinced I would not survive; no human could”, Rankin later wrote in his book “The Man Who Rode the Thunder”.
“The pain of ‘explosive’ decompression was unbearable,” he recalled in his book, which has been widely read by aviation enthusiasts globally. “I could feel my abdomen distending, stretching, stretching, stretching, until I thought it would burst. My eyes felt as though they were being ripped from their sockets, my head as if it were splitting into several parts, my ears bursting inside, and throughout my entire body, there were severe cramps.”
However, he also bravely emphasizes, “I was terrified, but not petrified. It’s a brave distinction of terms.”
After roughly five minutes of free fall, Rankin realized his parachute had not opened. The system was designed to deploy automatically at about 10,000 feet via a barometric switch, allowing the pilot to reach denser, breathable air before the canopy opened. The already disoriented pilot began to worry that the parachute’s auto-deployment system may have been broken, causing his only chance at survival to fail.
Unfortunately, though, he was now in for a completely different kind of challenge.
As he was passing through a massive thunderstorm with zero visibility, the parachute opened prematurely as the violent pressure fluctuations, updrafts, and turbulence inside the cumulonimbus cloud “fooled” the barometric sensor.
Once under the open canopy of the parachute, Rankin was far more vulnerable to the storm’s powerful vertical currents. The long descent increased the risk of his death from cold or asphyxiation. Additionally, it meant that he was dangerously caught in the up-and-down draft of the storm system, which buffeted the pilot thousands of feet into the air before dragging him back down. And that’s exactly what happened.
Ten minutes into the ordeal, he began vomiting from the violent spinning and pounding even as lightning flashed around him—later described as blue blades several feet thick.
The rain was so dense that he repeatedly inhaled or swallowed water with every breath and had to hold his breath to avoid choking. “Gasping for air, swollen, bleeding, and battered by hail, it was as though I were under a swimming pool, and I had held my breath several times,” wrote Rankin.
For Rankin, this was akin to “drowning in the sky.”
For about forty minutes, he was battered by hail, nearly drowned by torrential rain, and subjected to lightning and extreme turbulence.
“I didn’t hear the thunder, I felt it,” Rankin wrote in his book.
Thankfully, the storm’s intensity eventually decreased, allowing the pilot to finally avoid its drafts. Then, the rain that had threatened to drown him gave way to a comforting summer shower, and the air got substantially warmer.
Lt. Col Rankin and his parachute, which had endured unimaginable turbulence and the ferocity of nature, had miraculously survived the thunderstorm.
Soon, he approached the forests of North Carolina’s backcountry, got entangled in a tree, cut away from it, and landed on the ground.
Battered, frostbitten, bleeding, rain-soaked, and covered in vomit, he stumbled through the woods using a search pattern until he found a country road. “Lying on my left side. I simply could not believe that I was on the earth—that I had survived,” he later wrote.
Several cars passed before a motorist stopped, drove him to a nearby country store, and allowed him to call for an ambulance. He collapsed while waiting and was taken to a hospital in Ahoskie, North Carolina. Rankin spent several weeks recovering but sustained no permanent long-term injuries from the forty-minute ordeal and soon returned to duty.
Rankin gained widespread recognition for his iconic and unbelievable battle with the thunderstorm after he returned to active service.
Having survived a 40-minute thunderstorm in the air, he lived for 50 more years before passing away at 89 in 2009.
Nevertheless, Lt. Col Rankin is still remembered—nearly 70 years after the incident—as the only man who defeated a thunderstorm.
Contact the author at sakshi.tiwari13 (at) outlook.com
Um ferido ligeiro é o resultado de um acidente ocorrido na manhã deste sábado, pouco depois das 7h00, no IC2, ao quilómetro 191,8, no sentido Norte-Sul, entre a Pedrulha e Coimbra.
O alerta foi dado às 7h29 e tratou-se de um despiste que envolveu duas viaturas. Segundo o Diário de Coimbra, um dos veículos ficou tombado lateralmente a ocupar as duas vias de rodagem, enquanto a outra viatura ficou imobilizada na berma com danos significativos.
À chegada das equipas de socorro, o condutor da viatura tombada — um jovem de 26 anos — já se encontrava no exterior do veículo. A vítima sofreu ferimentos ligeiros e foi encaminhada para os Hospitais da Universidade de Coimbra por uma ambulância da Cruz Vermelha.
Devido ao aparato do acidente e para garantir a segurança das operações de socorro, o trânsito esteve condicionado durante algum tempo, processando-se de forma lenta através da berma.
No local estiveram 18 operacionais apoiados por 6 viaturas, numa resposta que envolveu os Bombeiros Sapadores de Coimbra, os Bombeiros Voluntários de Coimbra, a PSP, a Cruz Vermelha e a VMER.
A US Marine Corps (USMC) F-35B fighter jet crashed and erupted into flames near Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego on Friday morning, officials said. The pilot ejected safely before impact and suffered minor injuries.
USMC said: Emergency personnel responded this morning to an aircraft mishap on the flightline of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar at approximately 10:00 a.m. local time today, involving an F-35B assigned to Marine Aircraft Group 11, 3d Marine Aircraft Wing. The pilot ejected, was transported to a local medical facility in stable condition for evaluation and treatment of non-life-threatening injuries.
The single-seat F-35 went down at approximately 10:00 am local time in the vicinity of the base’s flight line, south of Miramar Road near Mitscher Way, the Marine Corps said in a statement.
“There was an aviation mishap involving a Marine Corps F-35B in the vicinity” of the air station, base officials confirmed, classifying the incident as a Class A mishap — the military’s most severe category, typically involving the destruction of an aircraft, damage exceeding $2.5 million or the permanent disability or death of personnel.
No cause for the crash has been released, and officials have not identified the pilot.
MCAS Miramar, located about 14 miles north of downtown San Diego, is a major hub for Marine aviation and was once home to the US Navy’s elite “Top Gun” fighter weapons school, made famous by the 1986 film starring Tom Cruise.
The F-35B is the short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) variant of F-35 Lightning II, a fifth-generation stealth fighter designed for the US Marine Corps. It is also operated by the UK and Italy.
Unlike the conventional F-35A variant used by the Air Force or the carrier-based F-35C, the B model is equipped with a shaft-driven lift fan behind the cockpit and a swiveling rear exhaust nozzle that can redirect thrust downward.
This propulsion system, powered by a Pratt & Whitney F135 engine producing more than 40,000 pounds of thrust, allows the aircraft to operate from short runways, amphibious assault ships or austere forward bases without needing full-fledged airstrips.
The F-35B has an approximate flyaway cost of $109 million, making it the most expensive of the three F-35 variants.
The crash is among several F-35 accidents in recent years involving various variants, though officials highlighted the aircraft’s safety systems as pilots managed to eject each and every time.
File Image: F-35 Crash
Earlier F-35B Crashes
On September 28, 2018, in South Carolina, the first crash of any F-35 variant was recorded. An F-35B from Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 crashed during a training flight. The pilot ejected safely. Investigators determined a manufacturing defect caused an engine fuel tube to fail.
The entire F-35 fleet was temporarily grounded for inspections.
Two years later, on September 29, 2020, an F-35B from Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 121 collided mid-air with a Marine Corps KC-130J tanker during aerial refueling near Naval Air Facility El Centro.
The pilot ejected, but the aircraft was destroyed. The KC-130 made an emergency landing, and all its crew members survived.
A year later, on November 17, 2021, a British F-35B crashed into the Mediterranean Sea shortly after takeoff from Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier. The pilot ejected safely and was later recovered. An inquiry later found that an engine intake blank had been left in place, causing the loss of thrust.
On December 15, 2022, at NAS Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, Texas, an undelivered F-35B undergoing production flight testing crashed during a failed vertical landing attempt. The test pilot ejected while the aircraft was still on the ground and was not seriously injured. The jet was written off.
Next year, on September 17, 2023, an F-35B from Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron 501 experienced an electrical malfunction during a training flight in heavy rain and instrument meteorological conditions. The pilot ejected near North Charleston.
The unmanned aircraft continued flying for approximately 11 minutes and 21 seconds under its automatic flight-control systems before crashing in a rural area.
The aircraft’s debris was not discovered for more than a day. A Marine Corps investigation later attributed the mishap to pilot error, while noting the electrical failures and display malfunctions as contributing factors.
On May 28, 2024, an F-35B, a developmental test aircraft being flown by an Air Force pilot, crashed shortly after takeoff following a refueling stop en route from Fort Worth, Texas, to Edwards Air Force Base, California. The pilot ejected at low altitude, sustained serious injuries, but survived. The aircraft was completely destroyed.
Despite all these crashes, the pilots managed to eject and survive, though some sustained injuries.
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