Military plane crashes near N.J. highway; solo pilot survives after ejecting

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Posted 2:00PM on Thursday, January 10, 2002

LITTLE EGG HARBOR TOWNSHIP, N.J. - An F-16 with the New Jersey Air National Guard crashed near a busy highway during a training mission Thursday morning, and the pilot ejected safely, officials said. The pilot, based at the 177th Fighter Wing at Pomona, was found at Warren Grove, a 2,400-acre bombing range, officials said. "He appears to be OK and is being transported to a local hospital for evaluation," guard spokeswoman Natasha Zoe said. The plane was not involved in a combat mission, Col. John Dwyer said. Guard pilots from Pomona have been handling cover missions over major U.S. cities since the Sept. 11 attacks, flying four- to seven-hour sorties at speeds of up to 1,500 miles per hour. Thursday's plane crashed at about 10:45 a.m. near the Garden State Parkway, and debris was scattered across the highway, a major north-south route, said John Hagerty, a state police spokesman. Hagerty did not know if anyone on the ground was injured. Jared Jackson said he was outside his house smoking a cigarette and watching planes fly over the bombing range when he heard "a big crack." "It didn't sound like the normal bombs being dropped," said Jackson, 23. "I saw a cloud of smoke come up from tree level." F-16s, designed to attack both air and ground targets, were used extensively during the Gulf War and to patrol no-fly zones in Iraq.