A US Navy Blue Angels jet crashed during a practice run in preparation for a weekend air show in Tennessee.
Onlookers stood stunned across Smyrna, a town to the southeast of Nashville, as the jet careened toward the ground, erupting in a fireball and cloud of black smoke.
Rutherford County fire chief Larry Farley confirmed that one person had been killed in the crash, according to The Tennessean.
A Navy spokesperson confirmed that the plane was, in fact, a Blue Angel jet, but they did not provide any information about the identity or the condition of the pilot.
The Navy Times says the Blue Angels are scheduled to perform 66 flight demonstrations across 34 locations in the US in 2016. The elite flight troupe is currently celebrating its 70th anniversary.
The last Blue Angels fighter jet crashed during a flight demonstration at a South Carolina air show in 2007.
“They were doing maneuvers and generally when the planes loop around they cross the runway and then turn around and basically when they turned around we saw a cloud of black smoke,” an onlooker who was at the event told Reuters.
Lt Cmdr Kevin J Davis, the pilot of the jet, died in the almost decade-old crash.
