This is the staggering moment a US Navy jet nosedived into the San Diego bay seconds after two pilots safely ejected from the plane before they were rescued by a fisherman.
Video footage taken on Wednesday morning showed the E/A-18G Growler Electronic Warfare aircraft plunging at high speed into the waters around the California city on Wednesday morning.
A large plume of water was thrown up as the jet crashed into the water.
Thankfully, both pilots in the plane, which was undergoing a ‘go-around maneuver’ in which the aircraft landed and was taking off again, were unharmed.
They were rescued by Brandon Viets, the captain of a sportfishing boat named The Premier.
Viets said he was taking guests on a fishing trip when he heard a jet take off near the Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Bay.
He said that he noticed the plane ‘seemed a little louder than normal’, and that by the time he turned around to look he could see two parachutes in the air.
The Growler was flying ‘super low’ and stayed in the air for a couple of minutes before it dived into the water, he said.
Video footage taken on Wednesday morning showed the E/A-18G Growler Electronic Warfare aircraft plunging at high speed into the San Diego bay
The pilots were rescued by Brandon Viets, the captain of a sportfishing boat named The Premier
Viets, 30, said: ‘I watched them touch water, and I told my crew, ‘We got to go.’
‘We spin the boat around and raced over there.’
He said he arrived on the scene as the jet slammed into the water, witnessing a mass of ‘water and mud and muck’ that was 70 to 80 feet tall.
The pilots were kept under 24-hour medical observation, but are both in good condition, the Navy said in a press release yesterday evening.
But questions are now being asked about how the crash in San Diego, which was rainy and misty at the time, happened. An investigation is currently underway.
The Growler has a price tag of $86million, per the Navy.
The crash comes just months after another Growler crashed in the mountains of Washington State, killing two pilots.
Naval aviator Lieutenant Serena Wileman, 31, and naval flight officer Lieutenant Commander Lyndsay Evans, 31, had been conducting a routine training flight, the Navy said at the time.
Evans had coordinated and carried out strikes against the Houthis after they blocked the Red Sea following Hamas’ October 7 terror attack against Israel.
