F-15 crash in Virginia during routine Air National Guard training flight

[blankslate]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28956792

A US military jet has crashed in Virginia but the fate of the pilot is unknown, military officials say.

Witnesses near the crash site in the town of Deerfield reported hearing a loud noise and seeing a large plume of smoke in the sky.

Officials lost contact with the Massachusetts Air National Guard F-15 shortly before the crash, police said.

No injuries on the ground have been reported and rescue workers have been dispatched to the area, police added.

Major Matthew Mutti, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Air National Guard, said the single-seat aircraft had been on a routine training exercise and had no munitions on board.

Augusta County Sheriff's office said the plane went down at around 09:00 local time (13:00 GMT).

Jenny McNeal, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's office, said the crash site was in a rural area near Deerfield town in George Washington and Jefferson National Forests.

Hopefully the pilot was able to get out of the craft.


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[Londo_Jowo]

Hopefully the pilot was able to eject. It's in a mountainous area and the forest is normally quite dense there as well. It may take the pilot some to free himself if he's stuck in a tree and may take him some time to find a road or farm house.

 

[trenchfoot]

These F-15's are very very old aircraft structurally speaking, with whatever else you can install in it or hang on it being newer tech. Just before my old unit converted over from F-15's to F-22's, we were experiencing different types of structural failures in the 15's that had never happened before due to aging beyond anything even our oldest experienced mechs had ever had to deal with; "breaking" new ground with every new sortie going up and out there as it were.

Like anything else built by man, eventually the minuses will outweigh the pluses and the venerable yet decrepit must retire lest avoidable loss of life occur.

On a personal note, I have a lot of admiration and respect for that old bird. I still believe it's the best air superiority fighter the USA or any other country has ever produced for its time in service, along with the pilots who fly them.

 

[blankslate]

On a personal note, I have a lot of admiration and respect for that old bird. I still believe it's the best air superiority fighter the USA or any other country has ever produced for its time in service, along with the pilots who fly them.

I wonder what McDonnell Douglass did with the machinery to create the airframes? Because it seems to me that it could be cost effective to build a proven in combat air superiority plane again instead of trying to build one that is a jack of all trades like the f-35 if the tools used are in storage.

As far as I know there isn't anything being used in large numbers that is clearly superior to the f-15 and for those threats we still have the F-22 wings.

Off-topic but I had a thought that Air Force fighter pilots are pretty much that branch's Special Forces when you think about the level of physical fitness and training that they have.


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[Thebobo]

Maybe there was no pilot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaF3d-ZEHC8