"At approximately 500 feet and 1.1 mach our Tomcat suddenly disintegrated beneath us.  Buga’s cockpit was on fire, and he made the decision to get us out.  The plane had exploded into two large pieces and a million smaller ones, and Buga ejected us out of the cockpit section, which was all that remained of the front half of the jet.  As my parachute opened I looked to my right and saw burning wreckage spiralling down towards the water.  I couldn’t tell the top of the jet from the bottom as Lion 112 was completely engulfed in flames.  The only thing I could discern was that the big piece was part of a fuselage with two wings poking out of the middle of a large fireball.  During the investigation the Mishap Board informed us that the mostly likely cause of the crash was an engine oil sump tank failure followed by catastrophic failure of an engine.  My personal opinion to this day is that nobody knew what really caused the jet to detonate.  In the immortal words of Gus Grisom, “It just blew,” and by the grace of God we survived."

Neil Jennings, 
CDR, USN (ret)
in email 8th September 2009