No one was hurt by debris and no property damage has been reported, officials said.
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He was believed to be “uninjured”, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) spokesman Peter Knudson said. The crash site is said to span some seven acres in the Moncks Corner area of Berkeley County near the Cooper River and Old Highway 52. Diaz said the Cessna is not likely to have contained a flight data recording device, or “black box”, but said it is possible some instruments or devices from the plane could contain valuable information. The plane and pilot came from Shaw Air Force Base, roughly 100 miles north west of Charleston.
Berkeley County Coroner Bill Salisbury says 68-year-old Michael Johnson was a passenger in the Cessna destroyed in the collision with the F-16. Two people were aboard the smaller Cessna, which was completely de…
It wasn’t clear if a flight plan had been filed, but Berkeley County officials say the civilian pilot had indicated he was traveling to Myrtle Beach. Salisbury told press that the fuselage of the Cessna was already located and debris area is 7.3 miles wide and scattered across a rice field.
A spokeswoman for Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, Lt Jenny Hyden, said earlier on Tuesday that the pilot had been taken to the base for observation.
Officials from the Air Force, NTSB, and Berkeley County, S.C., where the crash took place, have scheduled another news conference for noon on Wednesday to provide further updates.
Capt Robert McCullough of the South Carolina Department of Natural resources said the Cessna must have tried to climb to avoid the impact.
“I could see debris falling where the black smoke was, but I couldn’t tell from that distance what size”, he said.
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The F-16 was designed in 1970 for the USA Air Force as an alternative to fighter aircraft that had grown increasingly heavy and unmaneuverable. In comparison, an F-16 weighs almost 10 tons and measures approximately 50 feet in length, not counting weapons or fuel load.
