Com-Central.net

June 27, 2006 - The man killed during a F-18 fighter jet training exercise was a 25-year-old U.S. Marine Corps pilot, officials said Tuesday.

First Lt. Brian R. Deforge of Plattsburgh, N.Y., died in Monday's mid-air collision, U.S. Navy spokeswoman Lt. Sonja Hanson said.

Deforge and another pilot, whose name has not been released, were practicing dogfighting maneuvers when they crashed over Fort Hunter Liggett, a remote U.S. Army Reserve base 150 miles south of San Francisco, said Navy spokesman Dennis McGrath.

Deforge, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, chose to go into the Marines Corps as a pilot, Hanson said. Both Navy and Marine Corps pilots train at Lemoore Naval Air Station where the pilots were based.

The other pilot ejected and was hospitalized briefly Monday.

Both men were members of the Strike Fighter Squadron 125, also known as the "Rough Raiders."

Lemoore supplies all the fighter jets to Navy ships off the West Coast and serves as a training site for F18-Cs. Dozens of fighters rotate to and from aircraft carriers every month.

The F18-C is a McDonnell-Douglas single-seat fighter jet that can reach a maximum speed of 1,190 mph.

Several military units use the airspace at Hunter Liggett for training. Air-to-air combat training attempts to simulate the close contact of actual fights without placing fighters too close to each other.

The Lemoore base, which is 30 miles south of Fresno, is about 100 miles inland from where the crash took place.

Deforge is survived by a wife and two children. No further details were available and attempts to reach family members were unsuccessful