• Military

• WMD Menu                           

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Missing F-16 fighter jet may have crashed in mountains

ROC Central News Agency

2018/06/04 19:41:08

Taipei, June 4 (CNA) There are indications that a missing F-16 fighter plane may have crashed in mountains north of Taipei but the military has yet to gain a clear understanding of what happened to the single-seat aircraft and its pilot.

A military source told CNA that a mountain climber called the police around 3:30 p.m. Monday to report the finding of possible wreckage of the fighter jet.

It was spotted on a mountain trail three kilometers away from a radar station on Wufen Mountain (五分山) in New Taipei's Rueifang District, and an ad hoc rescue command center was promptly formed at the foot of the mountain at 4:09 p.m., the source said.

At 4:25 p.m., rescuers found more possible wreckage of the missing plane at a possible site of the suspected crash, according to the source.

The F-16 fighter jet went missing in northern Taiwan on Monday while participating in an annual military drill.

The signal of the F-16, which is based in Hualien in eastern Taiwan, disappeared from radar screens at 1:43 p.m., nearly half an hour after it took off from Hualien Air Base, the Air Force said in a statement.

It was being flown by Major Wu Yen-ting (吳彥霆), who graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2009 and has 1,039 hours of flying experience, including 736 hours flying the F-16, according to the Air Force.

The military source also said the mountain climbers found a yellow parachute near where they found wreckage and thought it might be a parachute used by the pilot to eject from the aircraft.

But an Air Force spokesman at the Hualien Air Base later identified the item as a deceleration parachute normally used to slow the fighter jets down when they land, and he dismissed the suggestion that the pilot tried to eject from the plane.

Search and rescue efforts continue in the area, but the military source said fog was limiting visibility, making the search more difficult.

No further details have been provided by the Air Force on what has been found or what may have happened.

Monday was the first day of the five-day, live-fire part of the annual Han Kuang military exercises, Taiwan's biggest annual military drill.

(By Yu Kai-hsiang and Joseph Yeh)
Enditem/sc/ls