Chilean Air Force Jet Crashes; Pilot Killed
A Mirage jet crashed on takeoff at a southern Chilean air base Saturday and the pilot was killed, air force officials and witnesses said.
An air force statement said the French-built Mirage fighter-bomber crashed while taking off on a routine mission at Punta Arenas airport, 2,000 miles south of the Chilean capital of Santiago, killing its pilot, Capt. Sergio Rojas, 26. The cause of the accident was not known, it said.
But the semiofficial news agency ORBE reported that the jet touched the tail of another Mirage as they took off in formation and plummeted to the ground.
And a commercial airline official who witnessed the crash said, “We saw a great ball of fire and heard a small explosion.”
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