A newly released video shows a military training jet colliding with a bird moments before crashing into a Lake Worth neighborhood in September 2021.
The Chief of Naval Air Training released the cockpit video on Monday, the one-year anniversary of the crash.
The Navy T-45C Goshawk was on a routine training flight from Naval Air Station Kingsville near Corpus Christi when it flew into a large bird while on its descent about one mile north of Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth.
In the video, one of the pilots can be heard yelling an expletive before alarms sound in the cockpit.
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"We are trying to make it to the runway," a pilot's voice said over the radio. "Yeah, we're not gonna make it. We're gonna eject," the pilot said seconds later as the plane rapidly descended toward the neighborhood below.
Both pilots managed to eject from the plane seconds before it crashed. One pilot was found badly burned, tangled in the powerlines with his parachute. The other pilot was found in a nearby neighborhood, police said at the time.
Three homes were damaged in the crash, but no one on the ground was seriously injured. Both aviators were injured but have since fully recovered.
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"It really was the quick thinking of these pilots that we didn’t have any more serious mishaps in this case," said Capt. Raymond Barnes, commander of Training Air Wing Two at Naval Air Station Kingsville told NBC 5. "If you watch the video, there are about 26 seconds from the time the bird is ingested in the engine and when they make the decision to eject -- 26 seconds is not much time to make an accurate diagnosis, evaluate all of your options and then ultimately, make a decision."
The pilots at NAS Kingsville are in advanced training to eventually fly off aircraft carriers and other amphibious ships. Barnes said the aviators are trained on weapons delivery, air-to-air tactics and close formation flying before attempting carrier work and moving on to the fleet.
"Unfortunately, it’s a dangerous business. The training that we conduct are done in environments that do result in mishaps occasionally. We do a significant amount of emergency procedure training, though, with all of our students and all of our instructor pilots as well," Barnes said. "That’s one of the hallmarks of naval aviation, we’re always striving to do better."
OFFICER RECALLS RESPONDING TO JET CRASH
Lake Worth Police Officer Christian Myers was one of the first to respond to the chaotic scene that morning.
He helped the pilot who was electrocuted after becoming entangled in powerlines, then visited him three days later in the hospital.
"For my closure and peace of mind I needed to talk to him again because the state I saw him in was no state you want to see anyone in," Myers said.
The pair formed a friendship and reunited when the pilot returned to Lake Worth earlier this year. He asked Myers to show him the homes damaged by the crash and the powerlines that trapped his parachute.
"We ran him through play-by-play what happened that morning because he had no idea," Myers said
Myers said the newly-released cockpit video gives them both some closure.
"It helps me piece together a little bit of what was missing, right? To think a bird could cause so much chaos," Myers said. "It's just a God thing. A total act of God that no one lost their life."
