The Cornfield Bomber, the F One Oh Six Delta Dart That Recovered From a Flat Spin, Landed Itself in a Montana Field, and Sat There Idling While Its Pilot Floated Down Under a Parachute

On February 2, 1970, an unmanned U.S. Air Force F-106 Delta Dart recovered from a flat spin on its own after its pilot ejected, then belly-landed in a snowy Montana field with its engine still idling. The interceptor was repaired, returned to service, and flew for years afterward. Aviators nicknamed it the “Cornfield Bomber,” and the actual aircraft is on display today at the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

What Was the Cornfield Bomber?

The Cornfield Bomber was a Convair F-106 Delta Dart, tail number 58-0787 - a supersonic, single-seat interceptor built to climb fast, chase down Soviet bombers coming over the pole, and destroy them with missiles before they reached American cities. Nicknamed “The Ultimate Interceptor,” it was a Mach-two aircraft with a long, needle-nosed delta wing and no horizontal tail.

The nickname is a running aviation joke: the F-106 wasn’t a bomber, and it didn’t land in a cornfield. It came to rest in a snow-covered wheat field near Big Sandy, Montana. Pilots, as the saying goes, never let the facts get in the way of a good nickname.

How Did the F-106 End Up in a Flat Spin?

To understand what happened, you have to understand the delta wing. At low speed and a high angle of attack, a delta behaves very differently than it does at speed. Get it slow and yawed, and it can tumble into a flat spin - the airframe lies flat, belly to the horizon, and simply rotates like a falling maple seed. In that attitude the flight controls are nearly useless, because air no longer flows over them the way they were designed for. It is one of the most dangerous situations a fighter pilot can face.

On that February day, First Lieutenant Gary Foust was flying air-combat training out of Malmstrom Air Force Base, near Great Falls, Montana. Three aircraft were up working a practice fight. Foust pulled hard into the vertical to work for position, and the aircraft departed controlled flight - the nose whipped around, and he found himself flat, spinning, with the altimeter unwinding fast.

How Did the Airplane Recover Without a Pilot?

Foust ran the full recovery procedure that Convair’s test pilots had developed for exactly this scenario. He worked the controls one way, then the other. Nothing. He deployed the drag chute to pull the tail down and drop the nose. Still nothing. The airplane would not fly out of the spin.

His flight lead was on the radio counting down his altitude. Every fighter pilot carries a hard number - a “hard deck,” the altitude at which you stop trying to save the airplane and save yourself. Foust reached it, his flight lead told him to get out, and he pulled the ejection handle.

Then the physics turned strange. When the ejection seat fired up and out through the canopy, the sudden shift in weight and balance - combined with the kick of the seat’s rocket against the airframe - pitched the nose down. With the pilot gone and the controls sitting where he’d left them trimmed, the Delta Dart broke the stall and began flying again. The engine had been running at reduced power the whole time. The aircraft dropped its nose, picked up speed, and settled into a gentle, wings-level descending turn - flying itself while Foust drifted down under his parachute and watched it go.

One of the other pilots reportedly keyed his mic and told him he’d better get back in it. He couldn’t. He was under silk.

Where Did the Cornfield Bomber Land?

The F-106 descended toward the snow-covered fields near Big Sandy, Montana, and touched down gear-up. The broad, smooth delta planform acted like a toboggan across the snow, and the aircraft slid to a stop more or less intact - with its engine still idling.

The local sheriff arrived to find a jet fighter sitting in a field, engine running, and no one aboard. Ground crews got on the phone to Malmstrom, which tried to talk them through shutting it down over the radio. As the airplane crept slowly across the field on idle thrust, they ultimately let it run until it burned off its fuel and wound down on its own.

Foust, meanwhile, came down under his parachute in rougher, mountainous country a good distance away, in deep snow. He was banged up and cold but fine. As the story goes, a local resident on a snowmobile reached him and brought him out of the backcountry. Both the pilot and the airplane walked away.

Why Wasn’t the Airplane Scrapped?

Normally an airframe that has survived a flat spin, an ejection, and a gear-up landing is written off - stripped for parts and scrapped. But when crews reached the field and inspected 58-0787, the damage was genuinely light. The aircraft had bellied in so gently, on that wide smooth delta and into soft snow, that it was repairable.

They disassembled it, hauled it back, put it together again, and returned the very same airplane to flying service with its squadron. It flew for years more, remaining in service into the 1980s.

When its flying days finally ended, the Cornfield Bomber wasn’t sent to the boneyard either. It went to the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio, where the actual aircraft is on display today.

What Pilots Can Learn From the Cornfield Bomber

The airplane didn’t recover by magic. It recovered because of aerodynamics engineers understood: once it was unloaded and pointed downhill at a reasonable speed, it wanted to fly. A trimmed, stable airplane at a sensible airspeed is constantly trying to keep flying straight and level. A great deal of what pilots do in an emergency is get in the way of an airplane that would sort itself out if left alone.

That is not an argument for abandoning a flyable aircraft. Foust had no choice - he was in a flat spin below his hard deck in a single-seat interceptor, the recovery wasn’t working, and procedure said eject. His survival was airmanship, not luck. He set a hard number before he needed it, recognized when the airplane was no longer his to save, and made a clean decision on time rather than a proud one a thousand feet too late.

The second lesson is humility. Sometimes you do everything right and the airplane surprises you badly, the way it surprised Foust when it departed. And once in a while it surprises you the good way. You don’t get to choose which. All you control is whether you were sharp, current, and honest with yourself on the way up.

Key Takeaways

On February 2, 1970, an F-106 Delta Dart (tail number 58-0787) recovered from a flat spin after 1st Lt. Gary Foust ejected, then belly-landed itself in a snowy field near Big Sandy, Montana, with the engine still running.
The ejection shifted the aircraft’s balance and pitched the nose down, breaking the stall so the trimmed, stable delta could fly again on its own.
The damage was light enough that the same airframe was repaired and returned to service, flying into the 1980s.
The aircraft, nicknamed the “Cornfield Bomber,” is preserved at the National Museum of the United States Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio.
The enduring lesson: airplanes want to fly, and good airmanship means knowing your hard deck and honoring it before it’s too late.