South Korea searches for 2 fighter jets in separate crashes
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-14 15:04

South Korean ships and helicopters are searching for two fighter jets and four pilots that crashed into the sea minutes apart in a rare single-day mishap, air force officials said.

An F-4E fighter jet disappeared from radar screens at 8:40 pm Wednesday in the South Sea. Eight minutes later an F-5F fighter jet dropped off the screens thousands of kilometres (miles) away in the West Sea, they said.

"Given various circumstances, we believe they have crashed," air force spokesman Kim Kyu-Jin told a briefing as investigations were under way.

South Korean air force operation's officer Yoon Yoo speaks about the crash incidents of fighter jets during a news conference at the headquarters of the Defense Ministry in Seoul July 14, 2005. Two South Korean air force training fighters crashed into the sea in separate incidents eight minutes apart, killing one pilot and leaving three crew members missing, an air force spokesman said on Thursday. [Reuters]

Colonel Yoon Woo, in charge of operations at the air force, said the fighter jets were on separate nighttime training missions and their almost simultaneous loss was coincidence.

"The air force has been embarrassed by the unprecedented case. But it was coincidence because the training missions went ahead independently in the South Sea and the West Sea," he said.

Each jet carried two pilots, Yoon said.

"The navy and maritime police have since been conducting a joint search in both areas for the missing aircraft and pilots," he said.

Body parts, a pilot's jacket and some aircraft debris were found in the South Sea following an overnight search, he said.

The navy and maritime police dispatched 12 vessels to the South Sea and five ships and helicopters to the West Sea immediately after the planes disappeared.

Air force investigators were analyzing communications data and flight records to determine the exact cause of the accidents, according to officials.

The F-4E fighter jets, which were first produced during the 1960s in the United States, have been deployed in South Korea since the 1970s. The F-5F was deployed in South Korea in the 1980s.

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