Two U.S. Navy jets collided in midair Sunday during the Gunfighter Skies air show at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, and all four crew members on board were able to eject before the aircraft hit the ground. The two EA-18G Growlers careened into a field about 57 miles southwest of Boise, exploded into a fireball and sent black smoke into the sky.
Videos taken by spectators showed one jet slightly behind the other before impact, with the aircraft appearing to become sandwiched together as they twisted and rocked toward the ground. The crew members ejected in quick succession. One was injured and was being treated at a hospital on Monday; the injury was not life-threatening.
The Navy said the planes were EA-18G Growlers from Electronic Attack Squadron 129 in Whidbey Island, Washington, with two crew members in each aircraft. Officials had not yet released information about what may have contributed to the crash, and the incident remained under investigation on Monday as efforts to recover the damaged aircraft got underway.
The severity of the collision was stark even before the wreckage was cleared. Billie Flynn called the outcome “truly remarkable” and said it was “astonishing considering the way the airplanes impacted each other — incomprehensible even,” but also said, “This is clearly a pilot error.”
The aircraft involved were built for electronic warfare, not spectacle. The Growler first flew in August 2006, and the Navy says it had its “baptism of fire” in Libya in 2011. Sunday’s crash happened during an air show, not a combat mission, and that distinction is now at the center of a question the Navy has not answered yet: how two aircraft flying in formation came together so violently and left all four aircrew alive but one injured.
