Tuesday March 27 10:23 AM ET
U.S. Army Names Two Pilots Killed in German Crash

MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) - The U.S. military named Tuesday the two pilots killed Monday when their army RC-12 plane crashed near the southern German town of Nuremberg and said American experts were investigating the accident.

The U.S. Army in Europe, based in the southwestern town of Heidelberg, named the dead as Chief Warrant Officer George Graves, 44, and Chief Warrant Officer Lance Hill, 43, of the 1st Military Intelligence Battalion based at Wiesbaden.

Hill, from Paradise, California is survived by his wife, a 10-year-old daughter and his mother, but the army said it had not yet managed to locate Graves' next of kin.

The pilots set out on a routine training flight from Wiesbaden at about 3 p.m. but their twin-engine propeller plane crashed an hour later in an unpopulated forested area near Nuremburg, killing both men.

The army said in a statement that the remains of the pilots would be taken to the U.S. military medical center at Landstuhl for positive identification and said a memorial service would be held in Wiesbaden Thursday.

Experts from the army's safety center at Fort Rucker, Alabama, were investigating the cause of the crash.

Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers are stationed in Germany as part of NATO forces.

Earlier Tuesday, British rescue teams searching for two missing U.S. F-15C fighters and their pilots which went missing Monday on a low-flying training mission over Scotland said they had found a body in the Scottish Highlands.

The two missing pilots were named as Lieutenant Colonel Kenneth Hyvonen from the 48th Operations Support Squadron and Captain Kirk Jones of the 493rd Fighter Squadron, both based at the Lakenheath air base in southern England.

Friday, two German aircrew were killed when their Tornado plane crashed during a training exercise involving aircraft from allied countries near the Nellis U.S. Air Force base in Las Vegas, officials said Sunday.

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