Body Found Near Second F-15

Rescuers recovered a second body Friday near the wreckage of two U.S. Air Force F-15s on a Scottish mountain peak, police said.

The body, which has yet to be identified, was found close to the summit of Ben Macdhui in the Cairngorm Mountains, where the two jets crashed during a training flight Monday, Grampian police said.

High winds, heavy snow and the threat of avalanches hampered the recovery operation throughout the week.

Air accident investigators were still working at the crash sites, where a cordon had been set up to preserve evidence, police said.

Jones was piloting one of two F-15s that vanished Monday over the Scottish Highlands. The plane's tailpiece was found near Ben Macdhui in the Cairngorm mountains, where the first of the missing single-seat planes and the body of Lt. Col. Kenneth J. Hyvonen Jr., 40, were found Tuesday.

The tailpiece of the second plane was located about 400 yards from the first wreckage site, said a spokesman for the Royal Air Force, which has been conducting air and ground searches in heavy snow.

The tailpiece was identified by its serial number.

The F-15 accident in Britain and the crash Monday of a U.S. Army reconnaissance plane in Germany, which killed two pilots, are the latest in a string of American military accidents in recent weeks.

The two F-15's vanished 45 minutes after taking off at midday Monday from Lakenheath air base, 75 miles northeast of London for low-altitude flight exercises.

The son of a pilot, Jones was described by those who watched him grow up as a focused and caring person and a role model.

Chad Steel, an Arizona State senior who met Jones and his wife at the Lakenheath air base in July, told a local newspaper "everyone (in the squadron) seemed to love him."

"Second place was never an option for him," said friend Thomas Sprunk, 27, of Phoenix. "He's one of the few men that I looked up to and cared about like a brother. Just watching him accomplish everything he said he was going to was amazing."

Jones' brother Jeremy, 24, flies an F-15C at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia. Brother Brett, 22, also is studying aviation.

Jones joined the Air Force in February 1997 and received his overseas Reserve Officers Training Corps commission in 1999.