[T.B. Yoits]

The Texan II has ejection seats so something must have been up that they didn't punch out. They were over a civilian population so they wouldn't have been performing maneuvers. I also didn't see any mention of a distress call or transponder emergency code. Some options:

-a bird strike through the canopy (it's a fast plane)
-an exhaust leak causing them to pass out
-mechanical issue where the crew may have tried to avoid civilian deaths on the ground instead of ejecting
-the crew was caught in an inverted spin and couldn't eject

[rlmorel]

I wonder what the weather conditions were like...it was still light.

However, in that time frame (from 1700-1800) it went from fair, to partly cloudy, to cloudy, to mostly cloudy (from historic Weather Underground data)

I wonder if they were disoriented and spun in without knowing it...maybe they had an electrical failure and lost instruments, then they couldn’t deploy a RAT...who knows.

We will have to wait.