A French Air and Space Force Mirage 2000D fighter jet crashed late Tuesday night near the village of Rogéville in Meurthe-et-Moselle, eastern France, as it was returning to Air Base 133 Nancy-Ochey. The two-seat ground-attack jet went down at around 10:40 p.m. with two crew members on board.
France's Ministry of the Armed Forces said on Wednesday that one crew member was killed and the other was missing. A body has been recovered from the wreckage and is awaiting identification, and the ministry said the cause of the crash is under investigation.
The crew paired a young pilot in training with an experienced weapon systems officer — the navigator, known in the French Air and Space Force as a NOSA — from Fighter Squadron 2/3 "Champagne", the unit that flies the Mirage 2000D fleet from Nancy-Ochey. Air force spokesman Col. David Pappalardo told French media that at least one of the two was unable to eject, and that it is far too early to draw any conclusions about what went wrong. The names of the two airmen have not been released.
Residents of Rogéville heard an explosion shortly before 11 p.m., and witnesses reported seeing a fireball in the sky as the jet, on a night training flight, lost radio and radar contact on its way back to base. A drone located the wreckage at around 4 a.m. in fields and woodland between Rogéville, Tremblecourt and Domèvre-en-Haye, roughly midway between Toul and Pont-à-Mousson.
The search for the second crew member has run through the night and into Wednesday. Firefighters, gendarmes and teams from Air Base 133, backed by a rescue helicopter with thermal imaging, are combing an area of about 15 kilometres (9 miles) around Pont-à-Mousson, with a command post set up in Rogéville.
Separate safety and judicial investigations have been opened to establish what caused the crash, and investigators from the BEA-É, France's state aviation safety bureau, are examining the wreckage. According to French media, the aircraft was not carrying weapons.
The Mirage 2000D is a two-seat strike aircraft built by Dassault Aviation for ground-attack missions by day and night, and it has flown in every major French air campaign of the past two decades, from Afghanistan and Libya to Mali and the fight against the Islamic State. France received 86 of the jets, and the type is expected to remain in service until at least 2035. This is the deadliest accident for the Nancy-based Mirage 2000D fleet since January 2019, when a jet from the same base crashed during a low-level training flight over the Jura mountains, killing both crew members.
Join our Telegram channel and get every article link the second it’s published.