
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.
Image credit: Euronews, Rhein Zeitung and Alessandro Caglieri
H/T to Emiliano Guerra for providing additional details
Lucky guy. Hope he gets better soon and returns to flying. By the way, similar incident occured in 1995 with Turkish AF. During air combat exercise, an F-16 got into abnormal situation. Pilot ejected at supersonic speed, landed unconsciously. After one year at the hospital, he returned flying. As far as I know, he’s still in the active duty. Safe landings everybody…
“hi, i see you are army…what branch?”