German Tornado attack plane crashes. Pilot rescued from tree branches

January 19, 2014 Aviation Safety / Air Crashes, Military Aviation

David Cenciotti

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

About David Cenciotti

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.

Zulu says:

January 19, 2014 at 8:35 PM

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…
jetaddicted says:

January 22, 2014 at 1:51 PM

“hi, i see you are army…what branch?”