Two skydivers almost collided with a pair of US fighter jets travelling at hundreds of miles an hour over the British countryside, a report has found.
The parachutists recorded the hair-raising moment on a head mounted camera as the F-15s flew underneath them.
A report by the Civil Aviation Authority found that the US Airforce pilots had not been told that the drop zone in Chatteris, Cambridgeshire, was active.
The planes were travelling at almost 350 miles per hour when the close call happened, while the freefallers were plunging down at speeds of up to 120 miles per hour.
According to the report into the incident, “it was unlikely that the pilots would have been able to see the parachutists and take avoiding action, and in this case they were unaware that they had flown beneath them”.
It also said: “The Board was shown Go-Pro footage filmed from the helmet of one of the parachutists and could clearly see the F-15s passing beneath, although it was difficult to assess the actual distance because of lack of information about the likely wide-angle lens focal-plane foreshortening.
“Once the parachutists had seen the F-15s there was very little they could do to avoid the situation, having no control over their speed or direction whilst in free-fall.”
Prior to the near miss on April 17, the pilots of the two jets were made to change direction to avoid a ‘collision course’ with a KC135 refuelling plane.
When the near miss occurred the pilots had just changed channels to a new air traffic controller and due to the frequency being ‘busy’ they could not be warned in time.
In conclusion, the incident was filed as the second most serious, with the finding that “safety had been reduced much below the norm”.
The report said that pilots based at RAF Lakenheath, 25 miles from where the incident happened and where the jets had originated from, were now being re-briefed about the dropzone.
