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Pilot OK after F-15 crash off Hawaii coast

HONOLULU — A fighter jet among a troubled fleet of F-15s that recently returned to the skies plunged into the ocean Friday, but the pilot ejected in time and was rescued shortly afterward.

A Coast Guard helicopter plucked the Hawaii National Guard pilot from the ocean. He was taken to a hospital and was listed in good condition.

The pilot, whose identity was not released, had extensive flight experience, said Maj. Gen. Robert G.F. Lee, the Hawaii National Guard commander.

“Our first concern was whether the pilot was OK,” Lee told KHON-TV. “I got the chance to visit with him in the hospital. He’s terrific.”

The pilot said he could not control the plane and started to lose altitude before the crash, according to Lee. That’s when he made the decision to eject and parachuted to the water 60 miles south of Honolulu.

Cause of the crash was being investigated.

Lee said the plane had experienced no problems during a routing training exercise earlier in the day. The Hawaii Air Guard’s 20 F-15 jets, built between 1974 and 1978, were acquired in 1987 and, according to Lee, had never before experienced a crash.

The crash comes just a few weeks after the Hawaii Air National Guard, which uses the fighter jets to patrol and protect island airspace, resumed flying the jets. The Guard returned 13 of its 20 planes to the air on Jan. 9. The remaining seven were still grounded and were undergoing inspections by engineers.

Hawaii had to rely on the Minnesota Air National Guard and its F-16s to fill in for two months when the island planes were grounded.

The fleet’s grounding came after a model broke in two during a training flight over Missouri, injuring the pilot. An investigation concluded that a defective aluminum beam in the frame cracked.

Another probe found that more than 150 of the military’s F-15s also had the flawed beams.

The aircraft in Hawaii will be replaced by F-22A Raptors with stealth technology starting in 2011.