According to Vladimir López Padrino, commander of the Ceofanb, the Comando Estratégico Operational de la Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana (Venezuelan Air Force Strategic Operations Command), who gave the new using his twitter account, on the evening of Saturday Oct. 12 some F-16s belonging to the Aviación Militar Bolivariana Venezolana (Bolivarian National Air Force of Venezuela) shot down two Narcos planes south of Apure, not far from the border with Colombia.
Image credit: Wiki
Padrino released an image of the remains of one of the intruder aircraft: a sort of admonishment for all those who might believe that flying above the Amazon rainforest at low altitude could be enough to escape interception.
Top image credit: via @vladimirpadrino. H/T to Emiliano Guerra for pointing the news over.
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small air wars continue…
Maybe the drug dealers landed it attempting to flee, and then it was strafed or bombed by the F-16. I agree that it is unlikely it was shot down. While Anthony’s assertion isn’t entirely impossible, I doubt drug smuggler King Air pilots would have the skill to successfully land a plane that’s been damaged by 20mm or air-to-air missiles. I find it even more unlikely that a King Air would be able to withstand any type of damage from the types of weapons employed by an F-16 and still be controllable to land by a pilot of any skill.
Hmmm…according to “El Universal”, the exact language used by the air chief was that the plane was “immobilized”, not shot down. This leads me to believe that perhaps the plane was forced to land and then destroyed rather than shot down. Perhaps so that the Air Force would not be seen as executing the crew of the King Air?
I mean, you’d hate for something like this to happen again:
Are not the propeller blades of the Super King Air
broken or bent by the impact?????