AF Pilot Killed; Bailed Out of Doomed Plane
An Air Force pilot was killed and a Marine crewman was injured Friday in the crash of an Air Force photo reconnaissance jet that narrowly missed a house in a rural area of north-central Texas, officials said.
Officials at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Austin, where the RF-4C Phantom jet was based, said the pilot of the aircraft, 1st Lt. James M. Poppo Jr., was killed when his parachute apparently failed to open.
The unarmed Phantom jets, equipped with cameras in their noses, routinely make low-level photographic tactical training runs over Brown County.
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