“As far as we are aware, it was two people on board and we believe it was a two-seater plane.” It is unclear whether anyone anyone else was hurt in the incident. The fire and rescue service referred further enquiries to Norfolk police, who declined to provide any more details on Sunday.
A local resident, Charles Christian, said he saw the plane come in to land normally, then heard what he took to be an explosion as it crashed. Christian said he believed the aircraft was a vintage Mustang, a US second world war fighter and fighter-bomber.
“When it came into land, it was working totally fine. I could see the propellers spinning round nicely because it’s done in D-Day-type colours and the propeller has yellow tips on it, so you could see it and the sun was catching on it.
“I actually saw it in the distance circling to come in and there was certainly no sign of anything untoward on there.”
One person has died and another has been airlifted to hospital after a light aircraft crashed near an airfield in Norfolk, emergency services have said.
The plane came down by the Hardwick airfield, which is about 10 miles south of Norwich, at about 3.30pm on Sunday. It burst into flames and firefighters found one person had died, Norfolk fire and rescue service said.
A spokeswoman for the service said: “We received a report at 3.36pm that a light aircraft of some sort had just crashed. When the first appliance arrived, it was confirmed that [the plane] was on fire and, unfortunately, we have had it confirmed that there was one deceased and one airlifted to hospital.