crash and burnv.

1944 E. Blyton Boy Next Door v. 39 The plane was burnt... Nobody could be rescued from it. My father was known to be travelling in it, so I expect he lost his life when it crashed and burnt out.]

1953 V. Randolph & G. P. Wilson Down in Holler viii. 184 When an old airplane crashed and burned, my neighbor viewed the wreckage.

1969 N.Y. Times 7 May 2/4 An Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter crashed and burned 75 miles north of Saigon.

1991 D. Coupland Generation X ii. xii. 68 Scotty's Junction is where atom bomb scientists, mad with grief over their spawn, would come and get sloshed in the Ford saloon cars in which they'd then crash and burn in the ravines.

2000 Red Herring Feb. 214/1 Broadband has suffered some embarrassing meltdowns, most notably by satellite companies like Globalstar, which saw a dozen of its satellites literally crash and burn within a minute after they were launched.

1971 Current Slang (Univ. S. Dakota) 6 3 Crash and burn, to fail; to make a serious mistake in carrying out orders.

1978 Washington Post 22 May d1/1 The Bullets were no longer speeding. They were crashing and burning.

1985 E. Leonard Glitz i. 13 The guy he killed was running on speed and trailing a lifetime of priors, destined..to crash and burn or die in jail.

1994 Hispanic July 22/3 If you use Spanish, be careful not to crash and burn. No doubt the language is booby-trapped for the unwary PR professional.

2001 Top of Pops Mag. Sept. 17 Have you ever crashed and burned? Going straight up to people and talking to them isn't really my style so I've managed to avoid most of that embarrassing stuff.