BBC

Body found in hunt for pilots

The two pilots were based at Lakenheath in England

Rescue teams searching for two missing United States airmen in the Scottish Highlands have found a body.

The body was found several hundred feet from the wreckage of an American F15C jet which had been located in the Cairngorms.

Search teams have been hunting for two single-seater F15C aircraft which went missing on Monday afternoon.

Within hours of locating the wreckage of one aircraft half a mile south east of Ben Macdui, they discovered the body attached to a parachute.

With the search for the other aircraft continuing, accident investigators must wait for permission from the local procurator fiscal before they can move the body for identification.

The wreckage was sighted roughly half a mile south east of Ben Macdui in the Cairngorms - close to the area where the last radar contact was made with the pilots' two F15C fighters on Monday afternoon.

The Royal Air Force said rescuers from the RAF Leeming Mountain Rescue Team made the discovery.

The incident in Scotland was the second involving US aircrew in one day. Two airmen were killed in Germany when their twin-engine propeller aircraft crashed in a forest on Monday.

The US Air Force named the two pilots missing in Scotland as Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Hyvonen and Captain Kirk Jones.

Both men were qualified F15 pilots and had taken off from Lakenheath air base in Suffolk, England, at 1230BST on Monday.

Collision theory

The last contact occurred when the aircraft made an air traffic transmission to RAF Leuchars and RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland at 1315BST.

It was feared the two aircraft may have collided during low level exercises.

A massive search was launched in the Cairngorms area on Monday involving RAF Nimrod aircraft and Sea King helicopters and mountain rescue teams.

The search resumed on Tuesday morning but rescue co-ordinators said white-out conditions had been hindering their efforts, with helicopters unable to get airborne.

About 100 members of six mountain rescue teams have been involved.

Flight Lieutenant Neil Daniel, of RAF Leuchars, said: "Conditions are not very good and are expected to get worse.

"We've got 50-60 knots gusts on the plateau, there is quite a lot of knee-deep snow about and for the guys on the tops conditions will be virtually white-out.

"It will be survival conditions for them."

It emerged that an RAF Tornado with heatseeking equipment had pintpointed a patch of heat south east of Ben Macdui, near the last point of contact with the two aircraft.

A team of USAF crash investigators has arrived in Scotland, together with two giant helicopters which could be used in the search.

A spokeswoman for USAF Lakenheath said Lt Col Hyvonen was a member of the 48th Operations Support Squadron and Capt Jones was a member of the 493rd Fighter Squadron.

She said Lt Col Hyvonen had been in the USAF since 1984 and based at Lakenheath since 1999.

Capt Jones had been in the air force since 1997 and based at Lakenheath since 1999

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2001

Answers

http://www.boston.com/dailynews/086/world/Wreckage_body_found_in_searc h_:.shtml

Wreckage, body, found in search for missing F-15s

By Audrey Woods, Associated Press, 3/27/2001 19:45

LONDON (AP) Search teams found a body and the wreckage of an F-15 jet near a mountaintop in the Scottish Highlands where two U.S. fighter planes disappeared, the Royal Air Force said Tuesday.

The aircraft each with one pilot on board disappeared 45 minutes after taking off Monday from Lakenheath air base, 75 miles northeast of London.

The U.S. Air Force at Lakenheath identified the missing men as Lt. Col. Kenneth Hyvonen and Capt. Kirk Jones. There was no immediate indication of their ages or home states.

British and American military helicopters and search planes, plus police, air force and civilian rescue teams, carried out a land and air search amid thick cloud and snow whiteouts. Wind chill readings in the 40-knot winds reached minus 11 degrees, the Royal Air Force said.

F-15 wreckage and one body were spotted Tuesday near the summit of 4,296-foot Ben Macdhui, the tallest peak in the Cairngorms, which rise in the central Highlands of Scotland and are Britain's highest mountain range.

''The body was found in the vicinity of an aircraft wreck on the eastern side of Ben Macdhui which has been confirmed as the remains of an F-15,'' a statement from the Royal Air Force said.

The F-15 accident and the crash Monday of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane in Germany that killed two pilots are the latest in a string of American military accidents in recent weeks.

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said recent fatal U.S. military accidents do not necessarily mean there is a problem with force readiness.

''They're not all the same type of airplane. They're not all in the same part of the world. They're not all doing the same sort of mission. It's very diverse,'' Quigley told a Pentagon briefing.

''And the overall safety record for the year so far seems to be quite good,'' he said.

The crashed reconnaissance plane, a twin-propeller Army RC-12 used to locate radar and electronic communications, went down in a forest near Nuremberg, Germany. The aircraft had been returning to its base in Wiesbaden.

The dead pilots were identified as Chief Warrant Officer George A. Graves, 44, and Chief Warrant Officer Lance Hill, 43, of Paradise, Calif.

Also Tuesday, a German military helicopter crashed in Meppen, Germany, killing all four people on board, army spokesman Siegfried Schaefer said.

Fatal training accidents are by no means rare. On March 3, an Army C- 23 Sherpa crashed in Georgia, killing all 21 people on board. On March 12, five American servicemen and one New Zealand army officer were killed when a U.S. Navy F/A-18 mistakenly hit them with bombs during training in Kuwait.

On Feb. 12, two Army Black Hawk helicopters collided during a nighttime training session in Hawaii, killing six soldiers.

Statistics show that U.S. military aviation has become safer overall in recent years. For the fiscal year ended last Sept. 30, the military aviation accident rate was 1.23 per 100,000 flight hours, the lowest ever recorded.

Fifty-eight people in the military were killed in aviation accidents during that period, including one of the worst in years a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey crash last April that killed all 19 Marines aboard.

-- Anonymous, March 28, 2001