A Navy T-45 jet crashed near Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas, on Tuesday, according to officials.
Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) posted on its official Facebook page that at approximately 12:00 p.m. CDT, a Navy T-45C Goshawk jet assigned to Training Air Wing 2 at Naval Air Station Kingsville, Texas, crashed while approaching the base.
One instructor pilot was in the aircraft and ejected safely. The pilot was transported to Christus Spohn Hospital-Kleberg for additional evaluation.
“The aircraft impacted an empty field on Navy property just north of the airfield. NAS Kingsville Emergency Services and Kingsville Sheriff’s Office responded to the scene. No civilians were harmed in this incident,” the post stated. “The pilot was conducting a routine training flight that originated at NAS Kingsville. The incident is under investigation.”
In June, a U.S. Navy F/A-18E Super Hornet fighter jet crashed around Trona, Calif., killing the pilot, the Navy confirmed in a statement to American Military News.
The jet was based at Naval Air Station Lemoore and crashed at around 2:30 pm PDT. It’s not yet clear what caused the crash.
No other service members or civilians were injured in the crash.
Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake Federal Firefighters and Naval Security Forces responded to the scene.
The identity of the pilot is withheld for 24 hours until after the next-of-kin notification is made.
Trona is a community in the Mohave Desert, located approximately 230 miles southeast of NAS Lemoore.
In May, Mark Thibodeau told American Military News the story of how he and front-seat pilot J.D. Allen were forced to eject after running into another fighter jet’s wake turbulence in an incident that nearly killed him. Thibodeau was trained as an F-4 backseat navigator and was assigned to the U.S. Air Force Fighter Weapons School at Nellis Air Force Base as an instructor at the time.
“I had a couple seconds in the chute and was about three thousand feet above ground when I went out and started trying to get ready to land in the parachute,” Thibodeau said. “And I looked down and saw the fireball between the toes of my boots. And that was not a good thing, so I kind of tried to turn the chute away.”
Thibodeau avoided the main burning wreckage of the crash, but “had pieces of burning airplane around me.”