Oct 24, 2015
"A III Marine Aircraft Wing F/A-18C Hornet belonging to Marine Attack Fighter Squadron 232 stationed at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California crashed in the vicinity of Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England at approximately 5:30 a.m. (EST), today", the news release read.
The single-seat jet, assigned to Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 232 out of Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, California, was returning from a rotational deployment to the Middle East, where it was attached to Special goal Marine Air-Ground Task Force-Crisis Response-Central.
His personal awards include two Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medals and one Air Medal - Strike/Flight "5".
Cambridgeshire police have said the pilot died in the crash after it went down in a field of farmland in the town of Ely, Cambridgeshire though MCAS Miramar has not yet confirmed the death.
The other five were diverted to RAF Lossiemouth in Scotland.
Patrick Turner, a witness from Redmere, said he heard an aircraft, but then everything went wrong.
The US Marine Corps said it is still investigating the cause of the crash.
He added: "The flames were huge".
'There was no way anyone was getting out of that alive.
Karen Miles-Holdaway, 48, paid tribute to the pilot, saying: "I was in my garden when I saw the plane going over". The aircraft had been en route from Bahrain and were scheduled to fly to their base in Miramar.
A Cambridgeshire police spokesperson said: 'We can confirm that the aircraft was a military aircraft.
'We are just very grateful to him'.
Friends and family were grieving Thursday after learning that Bay Area native Taj Sareen, the United States Marine Corps fighter pilot, was killed after taking off from an air base in eastern England on Wednesday. He previously deployed with VMFA-232 to Afghanistan in 2010 in support of Operation Enduring Freedom and was an instructor at Marine Fighter Attack Training Squadron (VMFAT) 101.
