US-manufactured South Korean F-5E fighter aircraft on Tuesday crashed while gaining altitude after takeoff from the air base in Suwon, and the pilot has not survived, South Korean Air Force said on Tuesday
SEOUL (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th January, 2022) US-manufactured South Korean F-5E fighter aircraft on Tuesday crashed while gaining altitude after takeoff from the air base in Suwon, and the pilot has not survived, South Korean Air Force said on Tuesday.
The pilot has died, failing to eject from the crashing aircraft, the military was cited as saying by the South Korean Yonhap news agency.
The incident occurred on Tuesday at 01:44 p. m. local time (04:44 GMT). The fighter jet crashed into a mountain in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi province, around 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Seoul and 100 meters away from a nearby village. Civilian casualties were not reported. Officials said the fighter jet carried no explosives.
The cause of the accident will be investigated by a special task force.
The Northrop F-5 is a family of supersonic light fighter aircraft designed in the late 1950s by the US aerospace and defense Northrop Grumman Corporation. Since the 1970s, South Korea has had around 200 F-5 fighters in service, most of which have been decommissioned. The same type of fighter jet crashed into a mountain in central South Korea in 2013, due to poor maintenance.
Last week, another US-manufactured fighter aircraft F-35A performed an emergency belly landing at the South Korean Seosan air base during a training exercise, the first such incident in the world for this type of fighter jet. The South Korean military has temporarily suspended all F-35A jets until the cause of the malfunction is identified.
