A JET pilot who was forced to crash land in Witheridge last year has told how he feared he was about to die.

Thirty-five-year-old Dan Arlett was flying over Mid Devon during a training flight with a student, who owned the BAC 167 Strikemaster jet, when he was forced to crash land at Witheridge, near Tiverton.

Mr Arlett, an RAF squadron leader who is also a trained civilian pilot and a Civil Aviation Authority examiner, was taking the plane back to Exeter airport last April. After some flight checks, the engine began to slow down.

Speaking about the accident for the first time, Mr Arlett said: "The engine flamed out and my first reaction was, 'This is not good'."

Mr Arlett said he went through the restart sequence but the electrical system and the radios failed, making an emergency call impossible.

Despite being 1,800ft up, he identified a suitable field and told his student to prepare for an emergency landing. He decided to land with the landing gear up, in case the wheels dug into the ground and flipped the plane.

"We touched down 100 metres into the field at about 105mph," he said.

"Usually, as soon as the aircraft is down it stops pretty quickly, but when we touched down the land was very wet and the aircraft was like a toboggan."

He said: "At this stage I shouted, 'brace, brace'.

"I moved over and put my student's hands forward. He was braced but I wasn't — I knew this was going to hurt and I knew I might not make it. I was pretty scared. It was going from a bad situation to one where I thought it was going to be pretty much terminal for me."

Mr Arlett said that although he didn't brace he was locked into his seat with straps. Still the force of the impact jolted him forward.

"Your body should not move forward, but it was forced forward about the length of my arm and I smashed into the instrument panel."

After the impact, Mr Arlett heard fuel leaking. He knew a quick exit was necessary.

"I was getting nervous. I was thinking 'we're going to burn to death'."

Mr Arlett cut the engines, and made the ejector seats safe. After releasing the canopy, the pair got out of the plane and managed to get to nearby Foxley Farm.

Mr Arlett said he would be "forever grateful" to the property's owners for helping them. The pilot, who is based at RAF Leuchar in Fife, and his passenger, a surgeon, were taken to the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital.

As reported in the Gazette, an Air Accident Investigation Branch report into the incident concluded that although the cause of the engine run-down was not established, the loss of electrical power from the two main batteries and absence of an emergency battery meant that the engine could not be restarted.