More than 500 rescuers yesterday continued to search for a T-34 training plane and two pilots that went missing on Tuesday in the mountains of Kaohsiung County.
“A total of 465 military rescuers, including Army paratroopers, 135 firefighters and several civilian rescuers are continuing the search in Namasiya Township, but so far they have found nothing,” Lieutenant General Yen Teh-fa (嚴德發), commanding officer of the Army’s Eighth Legion, said yesterday.
Yen made the remarks when approached for an update on the rescue effort for the two pilots and the plane, which disappeared from the radar screen at about 1:40pm on Tuesday.
PHOTO: CHANG CHUNG-I, TAIPEI TIMES
Yen said that heavy fog over the mountain on Tuesday afternoon had slowed down rescuers, but they had not given up hope of finding the plane.
The Air Force Academy, the base for the missing plane, said that the aircraft was designed to remain in the sky and glide for 10km in the event of an engine failure. Consequently, an estimated radius from the point of last contact was the only way to determine where the plane could be.
“Unlike civilian jets, a T-34 does not have a flight recorder or beacon that can help us find it if it goes down,” said Colonel Chang Kuo-hua (張國華), a spokesman for the Air Force Academy.
Chang said a T-34 does not have an automatic eject mechanism either, so the pilots would have to open the hatch manually to escape. The latest maintenance and security check on the missing plane was completed on Oct. 20. The plane had been used for 73 hours since.
There was no evidence pointing to a technical failure or bad weather conditions as the cause of the incident, he said.
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