TWO RAF airmen ejected safely as their jet crashed in a ball of flames yesterday - the latest in a series of crashes involving RAF aircraft over Northumberland.

A Hawke training aircraft from RAF Leeming, in North Yorkshire, plummeted into a hillside eight miles south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, at about 4.45pm.

The pilot and navigator ejected as the plane from 100 Squadron got into difficulties.

They were flown to a spinal injuries unit in Nottingham by an RAF helicopter from RAF Boulmer as a precaution, but neither was believed to have suffered serious injury.

No other aircraft were involved in the smash, near the village of Lowick, and a bird strike is thought to have been the most likely cause.

Eyewitness Darren Curry, 37, of Lowick, said: "I was working in the garden when I heard an almighty crack. The plane appears to have hit a hill.

"I just thank God that it didn't land any nearer the village because we would have had a full-scale disaster on our hands."

An RAF spokesman said: "A Board of Enquiry will be set up to investigated the circumstances of the accident."

In October last year, a pilot and navigator in an RAF Tornado GR1 were killed when their plane, from RAF Lossiemouth, crashed at Ingoe, Northumberland.

Eight days later, two airmen were killed when their RAF Hawke clipped a road bridge and ploughed into an isolated holiday home at Shap, Cumbria, hitting a van, though the driver survived.

Three months before that, in July, a Harrier GR7 crashed in countryside near Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, but the pilot ejected safely.