US fighter jet crashes near military base in England

A US fighter jet has crashed near RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, killing the pilot.

The F/A-18 Hornet from the Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 came down a couple of kilometres away from the base at about 10.30am.

Cambridgeshire Police confirmed that one person had been killed.

There are reports the plane encountered problems with refuelling shortly before the crash, but a spokeswoman for the US Marine Corps said she could not confirm this.

“We don’t know at this time if the pilot ejected from the aircraft. It is a one-seater aircraft so no one else was in it,” she said.

The squadron is based in California. A spokesman from the US Embassy in London said: “We can confirm that it was the pilot who died in the crash.”

Emergency services were sent to the scene near the Cambridgeshire-Suffolk border.

A Cambridgeshire Police spokesman said: “Emergency services are currently at the scene of a plane crash on farmland in Redmere, Ely.

“The military aircraft which had taken off from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk came down at about 10.30am this morning.

“We can confirm one fatality and believe there was just one person on board the aircraft.”

The crash comes just over a year after an American fighter based at Lakenheath crashed near a school in Lincolnshire.

The F-15 fighter jet from the US Air Force’s (USAF) 48 Fighter Wing crashed in fields near Spalding on October 8th, 2014.

The pilot ejected safely, sustaining only minor injuries, and no one on the ground was hurt.