American navy pilot killed as fighter jet crashes in English countryside

A US Navy pilot was killed on Wednesday morning when his F-18 jet crashed close to an RAF base In England. His Hornet aircraft crashed on farmland in the Cambridgeshire fens at Redmere, near Ely, close to the Suffolk border. The pilot was thought to be the only person on board. His was one of four Hornet Marine Corps planes which were heading back to the US from the Middle East after taking off from RAF Lakenheath. The plane came down just four miles from another RAF base at Mildenhall in Suffolk. In January last year four crew members died after a US military helicopter, based at Lakenheath, crashed on the north Norfolk coast.

There is believed to have been one person on board, and there has been one confirmed fatality.

Cambridgeshire police

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