4 Planes Crash in Mexico Festivities; 6 Killed

Four Mexican air force planes participating in a military parade for Independence Day crashed Saturday morning, killing six crew members.

The Defense Department said the accident occurred when a one-person F-5 jet collided with a two-person T-33, and the falling planes forced two more T-33s to crash over a sloping field in an uninhabited area west of Mexico City.

Six of the crew members, including a general, were killed; a seventh man was in grave condition in a military hospital.

Witnesses heard an explosion, then saw black smoke rising from the crash site. There were unconfirmed reports that at least one of the victims tried to parachute to safety.

The cause of the crash has not yet been determined, government officials said. Mexican military planes do not carry the “black boxes” that record final radio conversations on commercial aircraft and are used to help reconstruct the minutes just before an accident to determine its cause.

However, a former foreign air force flight crew member who saw the T-33s flying over the parade said, “Their formation looked ragged.”

That indicates that the pilots may have had difficulty with the tight formations required for exhibition flying, he said. “That kind of flying takes a lot of practice,” he added.

Mexico’s military is used mainly for drug eradication, public works projects and disaster relief. Three hundred soldiers are currently helping rebuild several villages in southern Mexico after a 7.2-magnitude earthquake on Thursday.

The planes were part of an annual military parade that marks Mexico’s most important non-religious holiday. In all, 26,000 soldiers and sailors marched down fashionable Paseo de la Reforma in a celebration commemorating the 185th anniversary of Mexico’s independence from Spain.