"We have already exported 60 percent of our practice flights to respond to local concerns," he concedes.

The next practice flight on June 24 ended with the crash.

Two years earlier, a pilot was killed when his jet hit a tree during a practice flight.

However, Navarre was killed in a practice flight on 10 July.

Between patrols and practice flights there was a lot of hanging-about on the ground.

He thought he'd seen a forced landing by one of our own night-flying aircraft on a practice flight.

But they stayed down at the Academy and all one saw was an occasional plane doing practice flights.

A few days after the ground units arrived from Alabama, the first aircraft were prepared for a practice flight.

The following day they carried out a practice flight and that night he led six of them on a raid into Germany.

That same day, he crashed during a practice flight and was severely injured.