An experienced US pilot is missing after the his F-15 fighter jet crashed in the mountains of Virginia, shaking residents but causing no injuries on the ground.
The pilot of the single-seat jet was headed to New Orleans for radar installation as part of routine maintenance and reported an inflight emergency, then lost radio contact, authorities said. The pilot and jet are with the 104th Fighter Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, officials there said.
It was unclear whether the pilot had ejected and the plane had no munitions onboard, Colonel James Keefe said in Massachusetts on Wednesday.
Just before 9am, residents near Deerfield - northwest of Richmond - say they heard a series of explosion-like booms.
"It's the loudest noise I've ever heard," 63-year-old Rebecca Shinaberry, who lives on a farm nearby, said. "(It) just shook the ground, and from my house we could just see a big plume of smoke."
Her husband, turkey farmer A.D. Shinaberry, said that from the first two booms, he thought a plane had broken the sound barrier. But 10 seconds later he heard a third boom - the crash, he said.
Then, "it was like a mushroom, black smoke came up," Shinaberry said.
From the smoke, Virginia State Police said, they located the crash site, in a heavily wooded but level area adjacent to a mountain in the George Washington National Forest.
A deep crater and a large debris field are on the site, and state police are searching, spokeswoman Corrine Geller said.
"It is probably five, six miles from the crash site to the nearest civilisation," Keefe said. "It's deeply wooded, and a lot of hills and mountains."
"We are not going to speculate on what occurred or the status of the pilot," Keefe said. "We are hopeful that the pilot is OK."
A massive rescue operation was under way in the rural area with rocky, steep terrain.
Keefe said the plane was flying up to 40,000 feet (12,200 metres) - "pretty high" - when the pilot reported the emergency. Pilots are trained to release equipment when ejecting, Keefe said, so it was likely the pilot did not have a radio.
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