By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - An Air Force cargo plane practicing for an aviation show crashed in flames on takeoff on Wednesday at Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, but military officials gave no word on the fate of the four crew members.
The C-17 Globemaster was assigned to the 3rd Wing at Elmendorf, a unit consisting of 6,000 Air Force personnel who fly fighter jets and other military aircraft.
The plane crashed at 6:14 p.m. local time in a wooded area just northeast of the air field. A fireball and plume of smoke over the area were visible to nearby residents.
"I saw it from my home. It looked like it was about one mile north of the east-west runway," said Lt. Dave Parker of the Anchorage Police Department.
"With a ball of fire that big and a plume of smoke that high, it was probably nothing good," eyewitness Roger Herrera, a local resident who took photos for the Anchorage Daily News, told local television station KTUU.
At a news conference afterward at the base, Air Force Lt. Gen. Dana Atkins declined to say whether the four crew members aboard the plane had perished or whether any had survived. Ejection from a C-17 is not possible, he said.
Atkins said the Air Force was following military protocol in notifying next of kin.
But Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell and U.S. Sen. Mark Begich each released statements Wednesday night saying they were saddened by news of the accident and offering condolences to the crew's families.
Atkins said the plane was "doing a practice demonstration profile" that it was to perform at the annual Arctic Thunder air show this coming weekend when it crashed just after its initial takeoff.
In light of the accident, Atkins said the military was considering whether to go on with the aviation show, which also features precision-flying demonstrations by the Blue Angels and the Canadian Forces Snowbirds.
The cause of the crash, which occurred during damp, cloudy conditions in Anchorage, is under investigation.
Elmendorf's worst air crash was in September 1995, when several geese were sucked into the engine of an AWACS plane just after takeoff. That plane was on a training mission as well. All 24 crew members perished.
(Reporting by Yereth Rosen in Anchorage; Editing by Steve Gorman and Philip Barbara)
