Two people died Monday afternoon when a vintage World War II-era military trainer aircraft crashed into a field in Bronson, Florida, authorities said the same day. The accident is one of several small plane incidents to rock the country in recent days.
The Federal Aviation Administration
identified the downed aircraft as a North American T-6 Texan, a single-engine plane that served as the primary pilot training aircraft for U.S. and Allied forces during World War II and remained in military service for decades later. The FAA said the crash occurred around 3:45 p.m. local time.
The Levy County Sheriff's Office
said in a press release that deputies responded to the scene near the intersection of Northeast 30th Street and Northeast 114th Avenue—a rural stretch of land several miles from Williston Regional Airport—after receiving reports of a downed plane. Authorities asked the public to stay away from the area while emergency crews worked the scene.
A neighbor who witnessed the incident said he had been watching the planes fly over his property throughout the afternoon. Harry Adams, who lives close to where the wreckage came to rest, said he was sitting on his front porch swing with binoculars when he saw three planes in the air around 3:30 p.m.—and noticed one of them was sputtering.
"You could throw a rock and hit my house right there. I was sitting on the porch swing out there all day watching the planes," Adams
told Gainesville-based television station WCJB. "I love doing it. I was watching them with my binoculars, and when you see a star like that, it stands for the United States. That's what it's for, it's a sad tragedy."
Adams said the old planes had been flying over his property regularly for several days prior to the crash.
The T-6 Texan—designated the AT-6D in some military variants—was known as "the pilot maker" and trained hundreds of thousands of pilots from the United States and more than 50 other countries over a career spanning several decades,
according to Lone Star Flight Museum. A total of 15,495 of the aircraft were manufactured, and the type remained in use as a training aircraft into the early 1990s.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board have launched a joint investigation into Monday's crash. The NTSB will lead the inquiry and is expected to release further updates as the investigation progresses.
The Florida crash follows shortly after a string of small plane incidents across the country. Just one day earlier, on April 12, a Republic RC-3 water plane made an
emergency landing on a street in central Phoenix after the pilot—a veteran pilot with more than 40 years of experience—maneuvered to avoid power lines. All three people aboard walked away uninjured, according to Phoenix Fire Department officials.
