Tina Knapp had just settled into her chair after washing dishes in her northern Michigan home last month when a thunderous “boom!” startled her back to her feet.
“The whole house shook. The lights and the windows – everything – shook,” she said.
She hurried to the front door as two more “booms” rumbled above her house in her front yard.
She imagined two large semi-trucks might’ve collided in her neighborhood, but when she opened the door, she couldn’t believe her eyes.
“A fighter jet had crashed right outside, in my front yard, basically,” she said.
In a wetland area directly across the street from her house, she could see a bright orange fireball raging beneath a billowing cloud of black smoke.
Fortunately, everyone’s home was intact, but large pieces of an F16 military fighter jet were scattered everywhere.
The pilot, who ejected, was nowhere to be found.
Finding the pilot
Several blocks away, Benjamin Vyverberg had been building a home on his property when he heard a startling noise and looked to the sky.
“I see a parachute come up and then the guy goes down,” he said. “I can barely see the plane.”
Vyverberg immediately called 911 to report the incident and then ran through a field and some woods to try to find the pilot.
“I was a little scared,” said Vyverberg. “I was like, ‘Who is this? Where is this person from?”
Eventually, he spotted the massive orange parachute and the injured aviator, lying face down on pine needles and dirt.
“I was like, ‘Are you ok?’” said Vyverberg. “(The pilot) must’ve said five, six, seven times, ‘was anybody hurt? Did I hit any houses?’”
Vyverberg helped lead first responders to his location.
The footage
Scripps News was first to obtain body-worn camera footage showing first responders providing medical care to the pilot after he ejected.
In the videos, the pilot, whose name has not been publicly released, remained still and calm as medics cut off his uniform and rolled him onto a backboard before transporting him to the hospital in an ambulance.
The military has not provided any updates on the man’s condition other than to say he was safe after the crash.
According to a military spokesperson, the pilot was flying a Texas Air National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcon assigned to the 149th Fighter Wing during a training mission when the aircraft started to fail.
The flight originated at the Combat Readiness Training Center in Alpena, MI.
While the military has not confirmed what caused the crash, body-worn camera footage captured the pilot saying, “I lost my engine.”
The pilot told one first responder that he attempted to prevent a larger disaster by trying to avoid power lines and homes.
Although she was briefly displaced from her home Tina Knapp is thankful her house was not struck.
“We would love to be able to personally tell him and his family thank you,” Knapp told Scripps News of the pilot. “He risked everything of his, to save ours,” said Knapp.
“There’s never going to be enough thanks,” she said. “All glory to God. Thank you. We don’t even know his name.”
Scripps News obtained the footage as part of an ongoing investigative series, “The Aftermath,” examining non-combat military aviation accidents, which the military calls “mishaps.”
The investigation found the number of the most serious mishaps in the recently concluded 2026 fiscal year surpassed the number of such incidents in the prior fiscal year across the Army, Navy, Marines, and Air Force.
The Department of Defense announced a task force earlier this year seeking to identify the root causes of aviation mishaps, but none of the task force’s findings have been made public.
“The Aftermath” investigation will continue with more details about this and other recent crashes in the weeks and months ahead.
