14 minutes ago
BREAKING NEWS
Stars and Stripes
Published: August 27, 2014
WASHINGTON — A Massachusetts Air National Guard F-15 en route to a maintenance depot crashed early Monday in western Virginia, with the status of the pilot unknown.
“We can confirm the 104th Fighter Wing lost an F-15C aircraft around the Shenandoah Valley region of western Virginia,” said Maj. Matthew Mutti, spokesman for the wing based in Westfield, Mass. “It was a cross-country mission to do an aircraft upgrade.”
Mutti said the aircraft was flying toward the depot when it crashed, but would not provide details on the destination to avoid inadvertently identifying the pilot.
Base officials learned of the crash at 9:05 a.m., he said, and local first responders were en route to the scene.
A local newspaper, the News-Leader, reported that an airport in the Washington, D.C. area told local police at military jet had crashed in a forest near Deerfield, Va.
“I’m on location, with smoke, and we do have debris,” the paper reported a breathless emergency responder radioing at 10:04 a.m. “I got debris everywhere ... I haven’t located anybody.”
An Augusta County sheriff dispatcher confirmed that a military jet had crashed in the Deerfield Area. Emergency responders were trying to reach the crash site in a remote area with no cell phone service over an hour later. Officials are unsure whether the pilot ejected.
Stars and Stripes reporter Jon Harper contributed to this report.
carroll.chris@stripes.com
Twitter: @ChrisCarroll_
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