FIRST REPORT 5:00PM EST: Highly credible sources tell YWN Israel that an Israel Air Force (IAF) F16 fighter jet has crashed.
The crash occurred at approximately 9:20PM IL, in the Mitzpeh Rimon area, which is located in the southern part of the country. Rescue services were searching Wednesday evening for the IAF pilot and a navigator.
Additional info will be posted as soon as it becomes available to us.
UPDATE FROM YNET NEWS: An Israeli Air Force two-seater F-16I airplane crashed late Wednesday evening during training in the south of Israel, near Mitzpe Ramon. The pilot and navigator have been described as missing, and many IDF troops were involved in searching for them. Pieces of the aircraft have been located.
Four F-16I aircraft, the air force’s newest plane, took part in routine training over the Ramon Crater in good weather. At some point, one of the planes suddenly fell to the ground from a height of 4,000 meters (13,000 feet), apparently failing to report any problem before the disaster. Another aircraft observed the plunge but apparently did not realize it would hit the ground.
It appears that human error was the cause of the accident, perhaps loss of orientation, but all other planes of this type were grounded immediately. Within a few days it should be possible to rule out technical fault as the cause of the disaster.
The aircraft took off at about 8 pm for a training exercise. The IDF lit up the area using flares in efforts to locate the pilots. Police rescue units were also called.
Dozens of residents of the area took to the streets to observe the search efforts. To the west of Mitzpe Ramon, helicopters could be seen circling over the crater. “I saw a mushroom cloud of smoke and then after a few minutes lots of flares,” a resident told Ynet. “The helicopters are circling above the site of the crash all the time.”
UPDATE FROM HAARETZ: Rescue services were searching Wednesday evening for an Israel Air Force pilot and a navigator after their F-16I fighter crashed in a Negev canyon.
Their F-16I Sufa (storm) took off from the Ramon Air Force base and crashed somewhere in the area of Mitzpeh Ramon at around 8 P.M. It was still not clear whether the two had managed to eject themselves.
The IAF has opened an investigation into the incident and has canceled all training exercises for the time being, and has notified the families.
The F-16 is the main fighter jet used by the IAF. The Israel Defense Forces acquired 102 of the two-seater F-16Is – a more advanced model – from Lockheed Martin between 2004 and 2008. Only a handful of safety incidents involving those jets have occurred over the course of those years.
In 2009, an F-16I was forced to make an emergency landing shortly after take off from the Ramon base due to a technical glitch. During the Second Lebanon War, two crew members on an F-16I were forced to eject on the tarmac during take-off.
The last fatal crash involving an IAF jet on Israeli soil was in September 2009, when Captain Asaf Ramon – son of late Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon – was killed while flying an F16-A south of Mount Hebron.
(Chaim Shapiro – YWN Israel)
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10 Responses
And of course since you want to be the first and aren’t physically located in Israel you are going to report, I hope you are at least aware of the reasons chosen to put a gag order and made a good assessment of YWN’s gain vs. whatever damage an early report might do….
May Hashem watch and protect all Yiddish kinderlach, especially those who put their lives on the line to defend us, shlo leshmo or l’shmo. Even if some of you hold it is not a worthy cause, we still owe hakoras hatov, because we are not like amon and moav, and also because these 20 year old boys are not the founders nor perpetuators of any ism’s.
(If you’re going to criticize take the time to think and choose before you speak bad, don’t just fling mud over the fence.)
Keeper of the Keys says:
the gag orfer is on the idf not the news. you can see this news on the jpost.com website also
#3 When YWN reported this originally news it was not yet on ANY Israeli news-outlet, the gag-order was on the news, by now it has been lifted.
Why can’t we assume that they ejected themselves before crashing? If the fall was 13,000 feet, they would have time to eject, no?
“Another aircraft observed the plunge but apparently did not realize it would hit the ground” WHY IN THE WORLD DID THE OBSERVING AIRCRAFT THINK THAT THE AIRCRAFT TOOK A PLUNGE?!?
#1, speaking of good assessments, or maybe avoiding Ayin Hara, perhaps YWN shouldn’t have said “pilot & navigator feared dead” R”L. After all, the article itself states “It was still not clear whether the two had managed to eject themselves.”
Also, the F-16I is NOT is IAF’s newest plane. F-16s have been in the IAF inventory for almost 30 years.
Also, the back seater is NOT the navigator, he or she is the weapons officer.
But other than that, a very accurate and well thought out article…not!
I hope they are ok.
Shazam – you are correct that IAF has had F16s for a long time. However, recently (I think about 2 years ago) Israel receive state of the art F16s that were modified based on suggestions from F16 pilots themselves and thus more aerodynamic and better designed in general. I believe the article is talking about one of these updated models.
The F-16I was specifically developed for Israel. Read the following link:
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/news/press_releases/2003/LockheedMartinIsraelMarkF16IFirstFl.html