Mechanic shoots down fighter jet during maintenance

The mechanic fired from the gun of an F-16 while carrying out maintenance.

A $19 million fighter jet, capable of travelling at supersonic speeds, was destroyed when a mechanic repairing another jet nearby accidentally opened fire during maintenance in Belgium.

The incident caused the F-16 Falcon jet to be completely destroyed while another fighter jet sitting next to it suffered fire damage after technicians accidentally fired from the on-board Gatling cannon of the third jet at a military base in Belgium.

According to details in Daily Mail, two technicians were repairing the F-16 when shots came from the 20mm Gatling guns with six cannons capable of firing 6,000 shots per minute, the fighting machine's standard weapons.

The warplane had been refuelled with around 10,000 litres of highly explosive kerosene fuel and was being prepared for a training mission along with the other damaged jet when the incident occurred. The technicians injured in the accident suffered from hearing problems and no burn injures were reported, according to Sudinfo.

Around 30 firefighters including civilian officers at the Florennes Air Base, 60 miles south of Brussels, rushed to the scene to rescue the maintenance staff. Colonel Didier Polome, who flew back from the Baltic where Belgian F-16s are policing NATO's frontier with Russia, said: "You can't help thinking of what a disaster this could have been." While, Boris Morenville, head of the defence trade union, said it did not appear to be a deliberate act or a terrorist incident.

The news of the incident was tweeted by the Belgian Air Force: "On October 11, 2018, at approximately 2.10 pm, a fire broke out during maintenance work on an F-16 on the Florennes Air Base. The plane burned. A second aircraft suffered collateral damage."

The F-16 Falcon is 49-foot long warplane and can travel at 1,500mph, faster than Mach 2. Belgium has 60 of the aircraft, of which 48 are assigned to NATO, according to the country's defence ministry.