NJ Air National Guard F-16 crashes
(01/10/02) LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP (AP) - There's hope the pilot of a New Jersey Air National Guard jet that crashed is alive.

Colonel John Dwyer says eyewitnesses saw a parachute as the F-16 went down near the Garden State Parkway in Little Egg Harbor Township.

There's been no sign of or word from the pilot.

Dwyer says the jetfighter is attached to the 177th Fighter Wing based at Pomona.

The unit has been flying cover missions over major US cities since the September 11 attacks. But the downed jet was on a training mission.

Yeah, damn Guard Units, what good are they ?   [;)]


Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

Any news to see if it crashed into houses or an open area?

I sure hope the maintaince is kept up because they are probably flying a LOT more than ever.

        “SOMEBODY DID have confirmation that they did see the parachute,” said Zoe Natasha, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey National Guard. The pilot was taken to the hospital.
      The F-16 went down in a extremely wooded area 3 miles west of the Garden State Parkway, near Atlantic City.
      The plane crashed at about 10:45 a.m. near the Garden State Parkway and debris was scattered across the highway, a major north-south route, said John Hagerty, a state police spokesman. Hagerty did not know if anyone on the ground was injured.
      The unit has been flying cover missions over major U.S. cities since the Sept. 11 attacks. But Col. John Dwyer of the Air National Guard said the plane “was not involved in a combat mission. This was involved in a training mission.”
      Air National Guard pilots stationed at Pomona fly four- to seven-hour sorties in which F-16s cruise above metropolitan New York at speeds of up to 1,500 miles per hour.
      F-16s, designed to attack both other airplanes and ground targets, were used extensively during the Gulf War and to patrol no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.
      In September 2000, an Air National Guard pilot ditched his F-16 in the ocean off Atlantic City after its engine quit. The pilot ejected safely.
     
      © 2002 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
       

Pilot ejected and is in good shape. Probably has some wounds from the ejection. Aircraft went down in a wooded area off an interstate.

Aviator  [img]www.milpubs.com/aviator.gif[/img]

I think F-16s should be banned.

It was just pure dumb luck that no one was killed.  

Nobody needs to go that fast and they are inherently dangerous according to the CDC.

What? No strange flashes or streaks of light coming from the ground?

[rolleyes]