The breakfast crowd had about gone and cook Michael Kelley was preparing for the lunch rush when the huge military transport plane smashed into Jojo's restaurant and smothered it in flames.
"The wall and ceiling, they just came in on us, and the grill came out toward me and knocked me down," said Kelley, who was in the kitchen. "I got up and called back, `Everybody get out.' "The plane, a Lockheed C-130 Hercules, plunged nose down, exploding into a giant fireball and spewing flaming aviation fuel as it hit the restaurant and the adjacent Drury Inn motel Thursday morning.
"It looked like Pearl Harbor," said Mark Whitehead, who lives nearby and saw the 60-foot flames and tower of black smoke.
Sixteen people died: the plane's five-man crew, two restaurant workers and nine employees of a plumbing supply company who were meeting at the hotel.
At least 19 others were injured. Ten were hospitalized, including three in critical condition.
An Air Force investigation team from Scott Air Force Base in Illinois was trying to determine the cause of the crash.
Kelley said he and others tried to rescue the restaurant workers.
"The whole world was on fire. . . . It was too hot. There was so much fire," he said between sobs.
Jojo's manager Dennis Serio said about 20 people in the restaurant escaped without serious injury. The two who died, he said, were in a corner of the building demolished on impact.
"There was this incredible fireball bursting through our window. Where there should have been daylight was a big spinning ball of flame," said William Capodagli, who was directing a quality-control seminar at the hotel for the plumbing supply company.
Capodagli, 48, said his shirt caught fire, and he dropped to the floor and rolled. He suffered first- and second-degree burns and smoke inhalation and was in serious condition at Evansville's Deaconess Hospital.
Vanderburgh County Coroner Charles Althaus asked families at a community center Thursday night for dental records and other documents that might help identify the bodies.
One woman fell into the arms of another waiting outside the C.K. Newsome Center. "He said they were burned beyond recognition," she cried.
About one-fourth of the restaurant was destroyed. The four-story hotel was damaged mainly by fire. The twisted metal of the plane was not recognizable as an aircraft by the time the fire was out at dusk.
The plane's crew, based with the Kentucky Air National Guard's 123rd Tactical Airlift Wing in Louisville, was practicing touch-and-go landings at Evansville Regional Airport, about a mile away, said Guard spokesman David Altom.
In the routine maneuver, a plane lands and then takes off immediately.
"They did two touch-and-gos. And they asked permission for a low approach and were taking off when they fell into the hotel," Altom said.
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Lt. Col. David Moremen said the airplane, built in the late 1950s, wasn't considered an especially old model, and that the C-130 is known as one of the safest and easiest military planes to fly.
The crew's pilot-instructor, Maj. Richard A. Strang, 39, of Floyds Knobs, Ind., was "highly experienced and had impeccable credentials," More-men said.
Strang piloted the first C-130 that landed in Panama during the 1989 U.S. invasion, said Maj. Jeffrey Butcher of the 123rd Tactical Airlift Wing.
Other crew members were Capt. Warren J. Klingaman, 29, Louisville, Ky., co-pilot; 2nd Lt. Vincent D. Yancar, 25, Louisville, Ky., co-pilot; Master Sgt. William G. Hawkins, 41, Crestwood, Ky., loadmaster; and Master Sgt. John M. Medley, 38, Louisville, Ky., flight engineer.