The first allied casualty over Libya turns not to be so dire: the crew of an F-15 Strike Eagle ejected over northeast Libya after their jet experienced an “equipment malfunction” late Monday night.
Ken Fidler, a spokesman for the U.S. Africa Command, tells Danger Room that recovering the pilots “continues to be an ongoing operation, but they are safe.”
To be clear, Moammar Gadhafi’s ground-to-air missiles didn’t shoot down the F-15. Fidler wouldn’t elaborate on much about the recovery effort until the F-15’s crew is back in allied hands, but he said they were flying “a strike mission against Gadhafi regime air defense systems” over northeast Libya.
The F-15 is no stranger to mechanical error. In 2007, after an F-15 C model mysteriously disintegrated during a stateside training exercise, the Air Force took the drastic step of briefly grounding the entire F-15 fleet of 700 planes. But the Strike Eagles, the newest models, were found to be “exposed to less stress” and had fewer design flaws than its predecessors, according to Gen. John D.W. Corley, then commander of the Air Force’s Air Combat Command.
Reporters for the British Daily Telegraph ran a photo claiming to show the wreckage of the crashed jet, discovered in a field near the rebel capitol of Benghazi. Fidler said he couldn’t say if retrieving the junked aircraft is part of the recovery mission.
al-Jazeera tweets that both crew members are “off #Libya soil” and that the jet’s weapons officer was “rescued by rebels.”
That’s the first confirmation of a downed allied plane as Operation Odyssey Dawn enters its fourth day. U.S. military officials haven’t specified if Gadhafi has fired any missiles at allied planes since bombers, jets and cruise missiles began taking out his air defenses on Saturday. Gen. Carter Ham, chief of Africa Command, told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday that he’s “detected no emissions from regime long-range air defense radars” since the strikes began.
We’ll update this post as more information comes in about the recovery effort.
Photo: Air Force
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