The 67-year-old British man has died on holiday in Greece as he attempted to take photographs of passing aeroplanes. He was found in the Vouraikos gorge in Kalavryta
A British man has collapsed and died at a popular Greek beauty spot while trying to take a photo of NATO planes passing overhead.
The man, who has not been named, was found in the Vouraikos gorge in Kalavryta after his friends alerted emergency services around 8.30am on Friday. He is said to have been stood on cliffs taking photographs of fighter jets with a group when he collapsed.
Friends made repeated unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate him, and emergency services then faced a difficult task to rescue the man from the 12-mile-long gorge, which is by the River Vouraikos and part of the Chelmos-Vouraikos National Park. He was unconscious by the time they arrived, and later died in hospital.
Two crews of firefighters had been dispatched to the scene. The local fire service wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “An unconscious man was transported from a difficult place in the area of the Mega Cave of Kalavryton and handed over to the E.K.A.B [emergency teams]. They [brought] 7 firefighters with 2 vehicles.” Local media reported the man may have been suffering from a prior illness.
A number of professional photographers and plane spotters had been at the Vouraikos gorge to watch fighter jets taking part in NATO’s Ramstein Flag drills over the Greek countryside. The first of its kind joint military exercise was focused primarily around Integrated Air and Missile Defence (IAMD) tactics, techniques and procedures, and included planes from the UK, US, Greece, Canada, France, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portual, Romania, Spain and Sweden.
This week, the RAF’s Wing Commander Bisset of the Officer Commanding 51 Squadron described Exercise Ramstein Flag as “an excellent opportunity to practice and iterate NATO processing, exploitation and dissemination techniques across the alliance”. Detailing the objectives of the military exercises, the NATO website says: “‘Ramstein Flag is an Allied Air Command sponsored tactical level LIVEX aiming to provide participating nations, as the Primary Training Audience, high-end training opportunities that include realistic problem sets in a complex operational environment.'”
