WWII Era Nazi Warplane Crashes On Freeway In California

If you heard that a Nazi warplane crashed onto a road in California, you could be forgiven for thinking that you were hearing about something from the early 1940s or some as yet unreleased Indiana Jones flick.

Well, it's actually neither of those things, and a Nazi-era plane really did crash land on the 101 freeway not too far from Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The vintage aeroplane, which is decked out with full Luftwaffe markings, burst into flames upon crashing down on the motorway, but miraculously the pilot walked away with nothing but singed hair.

The plane itself isn't actually one that was used by the Nazi air force, it was a North American AT-6 and belonged to a group that is committed to preserving aviation history called Condor Squadron.

Ordinarily they use the planes to put on flypasts and mock dogfights - a sort of aerial war re-enactment group - but on this occasion things went badly wrong.

The plane nearly managed to make a successful landing once the pilot knew there was a problem with it. He touched down on the freeway just fine, but then collided with a bit of the central reservation, which caused the plane to burst into flames.

The pilot, a commercial pilot for Alaska Airlines called Rob, said that the engines failed and forced him to start to look for a suitable place that he could touch down without putting others in danger.

He told ABC Eyewitness News: "I picked a spot on the freeway where I knew there was a big section of cars that weren't there,

"The engine completely failed. I was able to fortunately not hurt anybody, other than the airplane."

The president of Condor Squadron, Chris Rushing, said that Rob was out flying on a training exercise, and also echoed his pilot's thoughts about not harming anyone on the road.

He said: "The pilot did a great job getting it down and not hitting any cars."

He sure did.This could have gone badly wrong, VERY quickly.

As for the plane, it has definitely made the last journey that it will ever take in one piece. It looked as if the wings and the back end had completely fallen off.

Footage has now emerged that shows the moment the plane crash landed on the freeway.

As you can probably imagine, the freeway was closed off for an unknown amount of time whilst the emergency services tried to extinguish the blaze and get rid of the bits of aircraft strewn across the road.

It's a small price to pay in these circumstances, and LA is world renowned for traffic anyway.

The Federal Aviation Authority and the National Transportation Safety Board have launched an investigation into the crash.