Army Plane Crashes in Germany, Killing 2

An Army reconnaissance plane crashed in Germany on Monday afternoon, hours after two Air Force fighters disappeared and were feared lost over the Scottish Highlands, U.S. military authorities said.

An Army pilot and a crew mate were killed as their RC-12 aircraft, on a training mission from Wiesbaden, tumbled into a Bavarian forest about eight miles from Nuremberg.

The two Air Force F-15C fighters disappeared during a low-level training flight over rocky northern Scotland. Hopes for their return dimmed when civilians reported hearing a loud explosion near the flight path.

The incidents extended a series of military mishaps that this year has included a fatal submarine collision near Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and a deadly aerial bombing accident in Kuwait. But Pentagon officials said that although there has been a troubling pattern of collisions involving Navy ships in the past year, there has not been a major surge in aircraft accidents so far this year or last.

The coincidence of two such accidents in one day was not an immediate cause for concern, officials said.

The Army plane, which crashed about 4 p.m. local time, was a twin-engine propeller aircraft assigned to the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade. The aircraft was not carrying explosives, officials said.

The names of the pilots were being withheld until their next of kin have been notified, the Army said in a statement.

The F-15Cs--single-seaters designed for use in attacking other fighter aircraft--left Lakenheath Air Base in southeastern England at 12:30 p.m. local time with enough fuel for three hours of low-level exercises.

Forty-five minutes later, while the planes were passing from the supervision of one Royal Air Force air controller to the next, radio contact was lost. At the time, they were flying over the Cairngorm Mountains, the highest in Britain.

A caller phoned a rescue station in the Cairngorm town of Glenmore to report an explosion heard about the same time that the planes disappeared, according to Associated Press.

British authorities began a search that included two British fighter planes, three helicopters, two RAF mountain rescue teams and civilian search units.

Maj. Stacee Bako, a U.S. Air Force spokeswoman at Lakenheath, said in an interview Monday evening: “We’re waiting and hoping. But we haven’t heard any new news.”

Royal Air Force spokesman Michael Mulford told Reuters that “as each hour and minute goes by, we are profoundly concerned about their fate. . . . In search and rescue, one never says never, but at this point, it is difficult to be anything but pessimistic.”

The aircraft could ordinarily be tracked through distress beacons. But in this case, there were no such signals, a fact that Mulford said was “something of a mystery.”

Weather in the Cairngorms for most of the afternoon had been cold and bright with good visibility and light southerly winds, meteorologists said. But snow and sleet showers were beginning to develop in the mountains.

Not counting Monday’s mishaps, the U.S. military has had 25 major, or Class A, accidents and 20 fatalities so far in 2001. Last year at this time, the military had had 25 accidents and 18 fatalities.

A Class A mishap is defined as an accident involving $1 million in damage or a fatality.

The accident rates--a calculation of mishaps per 100,000 hours of flight time--are identical for the two years to date, said Navy Lt. David Guy, a spokesman. The accident rate for 2000 as a whole was down 20% from the 1999 rate, according to the statistics.