Federal officials reported that during a Dallas air display on Saturday, two antique military aircraft collided and plummeted to the ground, sending columns of black smoke into the sky. It wasn’t known how many people were in the plane or whether there were any casualties on the ground.

Anthony Montoya saw the two planes collide.

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“I just stood there. I was in complete shock and disbelief,” said Montoya, 27, who attended the air show with a friend. “Everybody around was gasping. Everybody was bursting into tears. Everybody was in shock.”

Leah Block, a spokesperson for Commemorative Air Force, that the company “currently we do not have information on the status of the flight crews as emergency responders are working the accident,” ABC News reported.

According to Block, there were five crew members on the B-17 and one on the P-63, she claimed. She added that at the time, the Houston-based aircraft were not providing rides to paying passengers.

Nearly 10 miles (16 kilometres) outside the city’s centre, at the Dallas Executive Airport, emergency personnel rushed to the crash site.

In real-time broadcast footage from the incident, bystanders were seen erecting orange cones around the bomber’s crumbled remains, which were in a grassy area.

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Around 1:20 pm, a Bell P-63 Kingcobra and a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress collided and crashed, according to a statement from the Federal Aviation Administration. During the Commemorative Air Force Wings Over Dallas performance, there was a collision.

During World War II, the enormous four-engine bomber known as the B-17 served as a pillar of American air supremacy. During the conflict, Soviet forces mostly utilised the American fighter plane known as the Kingcobra. According to Boeing, the majority of B-17s were destroyed at the end of World War II, and today there are only a small number that are mostly shown at museums and air shows.

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Videos released on Twitter appeared to show the fighter plane colliding with the bomber, causing them to drop to the ground swiftly and igniting a big ball of fire and smoke.

Wings Over Dallas bills itself as “America’s Premier World War II Airshow,” according to a website advertising the event. The show was scheduled for Nov. 11-13, Veterans Day weekend, and guests were to see more than 40 World War II-era aircrafts.

The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board were launching investigations.