Bonn Bans Military Air Shows : 11 From U.S. Reported in Critical Condition After Sunday Disaster

West Germany today banned military air shows and called on NATO to abandon such stunt-flying spectacles after three Italian fighter jets collided and one slammed into a crowd in a fireball, killing 46 people.

About 500 people were injured, including dozens who were critically burned by jet fuel, in the accident Sunday at Ramstein U.S. Air Base. (Story, Page 7.) Eleven Americans were in critical condition at a U.S. Army hospital in Landstuhl, Ramstein spokesman Sgt. Eddie Lee said.

Defense Minister Rupert Scholz quickly canceled a military air show scheduled for September and announced today that Bonn officials and their NATO allies are suspending any further shows in West Germany.

Scholz said in a statement today that officials will study ways for West Germany and its NATO allies to demonstrate their air forces’ abilities to the public without endangering civilians.

Demand for Resignation

“Until suggestions for effective measures are complete, there will not be any more air shows with military aircraft in West Germany, this with the agreement of the air forces of our NATO allies,” Scholz announced.

He also said he is banning West German military aircraft from stunts like the one that led to Sunday’s disaster.

Members of the Greens Party called for Scholz’s resignation.

More than 300,000 people, most of them Americans and West Germans, were watching as the Italian air force team’s 10 jets, flying about 180 feet off the ground, intersected over the field from three directions. Two planes plunged to the ground and a third careened in flames into the crowd, setting off an inferno more than 100 feet high and 100 feet wide.

British Event Upcoming

Authorities issued no list of dead or injured and said identification of victims will be a lengthy process becaused many people were badly burned. The nationalities of the dead were not known.

Sunday’s tragedy came a week before Europe’s biggest aviation event--England’s Farnborough Air Show. In Britain, Ken Collins, a Labor Party member of the European Parliament, wrote to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher today urging that Farnborough be canceled because “we cannot afford to take any more needless risks with human life.”

Organizers said the show will go on, and spokesman Duncan Simpson, a former test pilot, said the safety rules already are so strict that there is little scope for major change.