The Navy has identified the two aircraft that collided off the North Carolina coast as F/A-18 Super Hornet jet fighters.
The Navy posted the information on its Twitter account Thursday.
Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer 3rd Class Joshua Canup says Coast Guard crews were notified about 10:30 a.m. Thursday of the collision about 25 miles east of North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
He says the four were plucked off a commercial fishing ship that pulled them out of the Atlantic Ocean and flown by Coast Guard helicopter to a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. Their conditions were not immediately known.
The helicopter was dispatched from the Coast Guard’s air station in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The station’s helicopters perform ocean search and rescue operations off North Carolina and Virginia as far east as Bermuda.
(AP)