Washington — U.S. military aviation suffered two blows Monday with the fatal crash of an Army plane in Germany and the disappearance and apparent loss of two Air Force fighter jets in Scotland.
British authorities were investigating a report from a caller of an explosion at the exact moment the fighter jets vanished from radar.
An Army RC-12, a twin-engine propeller aircraft used to detect, identify and locate enemy radar and electronic communications, crashed in a forest about 8 miles from Nuremberg, killing the two pilots on board, Army spokeswoman Hilde Patton said from 5th Corps headquarters at Heidelberg.
German and American authorities at the scene were attempting to recover the pilots' remains from the crash scene, Patton said. There was no initial indication of what caused the crash.
At roughly the same time, the Air Force disclosed that two F-15C fighters were overdue on a return flight to their home base at Lakenheath in southern England after conducting low-level flight training in Scotland.
Several hours later the Air Force said there had been no word from the two F-15 pilots nor any confirmation of their fate. The lack of communication suggested a strong possibility that they had crashed, officials said.
A caller phoned a mountain rescue station about 2 p.m. local time at Glenmore, which is in the Cairngorm Mountains in the Scottish Highlands, and reported hearing an explosion about 45 minutes earlier, said Royal Air Force spokesman Michael Mulford.
A search effort was suspended late Monday night because of a snowstorm.
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