It’s not every day that you get to see an American WWII plane in the wild but unfortunately, it had to be like this.
If you were traveling on the 101 Freeway earlier today (Oct. 23,2018) around 2 P.M. and hit major traffic that brought you to a standstill, this is why. As per the Los Angeles County Fire Department in a series of tweets posted earlier today, they reported that a small WW2 fighter plane crash-landed on a stretch of Los Angeles Freeway.
You’ll be happy to know that while the plane is obviously a total write-off, LAFD was able to extract the pilot reporting zero injuries before they rushed him to the hospital to get a more thorough evaluation. In addition literally no other vehicles were involved with the extent of the damage concentrated within a few meters from the plane.
Check out a couple of posts that are circulating social media below.
#LibertyIC on scene of a small plane down center divider of the 101 fwy in #Agourahills pilot removed from plane with out injury. The plane is on fire with no exposures & no other vehicles involved
— LACounty Fire PIO (@LACoFDPIO) October 23, 2018
I’ve also embedded the map of the location where it landed below.
Thanks to some commenters on KTLA’s skycam live video, several commenters with a keen eye for vintage planes of this sort ID’d this bird as an AT-6 Texan based out of Van Nuys, an American single-seat single-engine trainer plane used extensively in WW2 to train American pilots. With only 15,495 T-6’s made, only a handful exist, so, it’s a sad day for vintage aircraft lovers the world over.
This is not the first time that a plane has landed on a freeway recently. As a matter of fact, a Piper plane landed on a San Diego Freeway earlier last week and just two months earlier, this small Cessna landed in a freeway in Northern California. It might be just me but it’s a worrying trend that has me a little perturbed.
As of this writing, there’s no official explanation why this particular AT-6 landed on the 101.
I’ll update y’all on any new developments as they come in.
WWII fighter plane crash lands on L.A. 101 Freeway, pilot survives
