Renowned Test Pilot, Scott Crossfield, Plane Missing in Ga.
Scott Crossfield flying a single-engine plane went missing when it left Alabama for Virginia on Wednesday morning.
The missing plane left Prattville, Ala., around 9 a.m. Wednesday en route to Manassas, Va. Search crews from the Civil Air Patrol were conducting an air and ground search along the flight path, focusing on a hilly, forested region of north-central Georgia.
Search teams combed the forests of northern Georgia looking for the plane registered to Crossfield. Scott Crossfield was the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound. The wreckage of the plane was later found Thursday with a body inside.
Searchers found the wreckage shortly after 1 p.m. in the mountains near Ranger, Ga., about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta, a Civil Air Patrol spokeswoman said.
Search teams had combed the forests of northern Georgia looking for the plane registered to Crossfield, the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound.
Officials did not immediately know who was flying the single-engine plane or whether Crossfield was aboard when it left Alabama for Virginia on Wednesday morning.
The plane was last spotted on radar later that day over Georgia, north of Atlanta, the Civil Air Patrol’s Georgia Wing said. The Civil Air Patrol scheduled an afternoon news conference Thursday in the northern Georgia town of Ranger to discuss the search.
(Yahoo News)
Test pilot Crossfield, first to break Mach 2, dies in plane crash
Scott Crossfield, the hotshot test pilot and aircraft designer who in 1953 became the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound, was killed in the crash of his small plane, authorities said Thursday. He was 84.
Crossfield’s body was found in the wreckage Thursday in the mountains about 50 miles northwest of Atlanta, a day after the single-engine plane he was piloting dropped off radar screens on a flight from Alabama to Virginia. There were thunderstorms in the area at the time.
The cause of the crash was under investigation. Crossfield was believed to be the only person aboard.
(USA Today)