German Tornado attack plane crashes. Pilot rescued from tree branches

Published on: January 19, 2014 at 8:27 PM

On Jan. 16, a Tornado fighter bomber belonging to the German Air Force crashed south east of Laubach, not far from Büchel airbase in central western Germany.

Both the pilot and the navigator (a WSO – weapons system officer in the American mil aviation jargon) ejected from the plane with minor injuries; one of them was rescued while hanging from a tree as the following image (credit Rhein Zeitung) shows.

Here below is a photo of the doomed plane taken by The Aviationist’s contributor Alessandro Caglieri at Decimomannu airbase in April 2013.

More from The Aviationist

Military Aviation

U.S. Air Force Releases Photos Of WC-135 ‘Nuke Sniffer’ Deployment to Middle East

F-35

Lockheed Martin Has Delivered The 100th F-35C

Image credit: Euronews, Rhein Zeitung and Alessandro Caglieri

H/T to Emiliano Guerra for providing additional details

TAGGED:Büchel German Air Force Panavia Tornado

Share This Article

By David Cenciotti

Follow:

David Cenciotti is a journalist based in Rome, Italy. He is the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of the world’s most famous and read military aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for major worldwide magazines, including Air Forces Monthly, Combat Aircraft, and many others, covering aviation, defense, war, industry, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown several combat planes with different air forces. He is a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Force, a private pilot and a graduate in Computer Engineering. He has written five books and contributed to many more ones.