Two crew members were onboard a Navy aircraft when it crashed during a routine training flight on Oct. 15 in Washington State, officials said.
Two U.S. Navy crew members who were missing after their aircraft crashed near Mount Rainier in Washington State during a training flight last week were declared dead on Sunday, according to Navy officials.
The jet that crashed was known as a “Zapper,” or VAQ-130, the oldest electronic warfare squadron in the U.S. Navy.
“It is with a heavy heart that we share the loss of two beloved Zappers,” Cmdr. Timothy Warburton, commanding officer of Electronic Attack Squadron, which is stationed on Whidbey Island near Seattle, said in a statement posted to social media by the Navy, referring to the crew.
The names of the aviators were not released on Sunday pending notification of next of kin.
The crash took place after 3 p.m. on Oct. 15 during a routine training flight. The crew members were onboard a Boeing EA-18G Growler, a specialized electronic attack aircraft that is part of the Navy’s “first line of defense in hostile environments,” according to its website.
“Our priority right now is taking care of the families of our fallen aviators, and ensuring the well-being of our Sailors and the Growler community,” Commander Warburton added.
The Navy said that the wreckage was found at about 6,000 feet altitude in “a remote, steep and heavily-wooded area east of Mount Rainier.”
Search and rescue teams from the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, supported by Army soldiers stationed at nearby Joint Base Lewis–McChord, responded to the crash site and looked for the crew members for several days.
The Navy said on Sunday that efforts had shifted “from search and rescue efforts to recovery operations.” The cause of the crash remained under investigation, the Navy said.
Before the training mission that led to the crash, the squadron had returned to Whidbey Island from a recent deployment in the Middle East, the Navy said in a statement last week.
The squadron had conducted operations in the Southern Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden to “maintain the freedom of navigation in international waterways,” the Navy said in another statement about the deployment.
Shipping in the region has been disrupted by attacks by the Houthis, a Shiite militant group based in Yemen.
The squadron had performed nearly 700 combat missions to “degrade the Houthi capability to threaten innocent shipping” during its nine-month deployment, the release said.
Source: Elections - nytimes.com
