I’m chasing this story about as fast as my little stumpy legs will carry me.

I’ve just spoken with the Eglin Air Force Base public affairs (5:22 p.m.) and have been told BOTH pilots have been found. As the crash involved F-15Cs, unless there was someone taped to a wing these are single seat aircraft, so everyone that was in the air has apparently made it back. I don’t know the condition but will post here and update the story online as soon as I know.

UPDATE 1 -

Some of the big news outlets are already reporting that this was a collision. There are only TWO PEOPLE who know whether or not those planes collided, and I don’t think either of those pilots were thinking to call CNN on the parachute ride down. If and when the Air Force announces that the planes collided I will make the appropriate update. But I am not going to leap to conclusions on this.

UPDATE 2 - One of the pilots  has died, the other is listed as in good condition.

I know it’s pushing two weeks old, but I am still amazed by the simulation of the Nov. 2 F-15 breakup that the Air Force released.

 There’s not any sort of meaningful comparison to draw here, and I’m sure Maj. Stephen Stilwell is probably tired of people asking, “what was it like?” The obvious response being, “It was like breaking apart at 18,000 feet while traveling several hundred miles an hour and having your left arm shattered.”  I can’t begin to  imagine the experience — my sole reference being a flat-tire, which had the good sense to happen at about 30 miles an hour and, oh yeah, on the farging ground. 

 Bear in mind that as his plane literally snapped in half, dislocating and shattering one arm, Maj. Stilwell still had the presence of mind and the strength to safely eject. I assume that once on the ground he wrestled a grizzly bear and then found Bin Laden, but only because those things are slightly less awesome than making it out of that cockpit alive.

This sort of reflexive action in the midst of catastrophe doesn’t happen on accident.  The pilots flying those jets don’t just hop in and take off, and they aren’t the sort of folks content with doing it “pretty good, most of the time.”  There’s a lot of work involved with what those fighter pilots do. When they go rumbling across the sky on our day off, it’s easy to forget that.