Tragedy at sea: US Seahawk helicopter crashes, crew missing

US Navy warships and aircraft from the United States, Britain and Greece yesterday continued their efforts to locate the three crew members of a US Navy SH-60B Seahawk helicopter west of the Peloponnese, after their helicopter plunged into the Mediterranean Sea on Tuesday morning. The Seahawk crashed approximately 80 nautical miles west of Greece after taking off from destroyer USS Hayler during a routine maintenance flight. «Search efforts, which have included Rigid Hull Inflatable Boats from both Hayler and USS Ross, a P-3 Orion from Patrol Squadron Ten, a nearby British C-130 which was vectored to the area as well as a C-130 from Greece, have found only an oil slick and debris believed to be from the helicopter,» the US Sixth Fleet Command from Gaeta, Italy, said in a statement yesterday. This is the second accident involving US Navy aircraft in Greek waters in less than a month. On March 2 an F-14 Tomcat fighter jet crashed in the Mediterranean Sea 50 nautical miles south of Crete, minutes after taking off from the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy for a routine training exercise. The pilot, identified as Lt Cmdr. Christopher M. Blaschum, 33, of Virginia Beach, was killed in the crash, while his co-pilot managed to eject safely. Both men were assigned to Fighter Squadron 143 based at the Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginian Beach. The carrier had just ended a two-day port of call at the US naval base at Souda Bay, Crete before heading to the Arabian Sea through the Suez Canal to relieve aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. The Seahawk that crashed on Tuesday morning was a twin-engine helicopter used for anti-submarine warfare, search and rescue missions, and special operations. It entered the service in 1982 and operates with a crew of three to four. «The search-and-rescue effort continues. We have not found any of the crew at this point,» Lt Cmdr. Nick Balice, a Sixth Fleet spokesman told Stars and Stripes, the newspaper of the US Armed Forces. The SH-60B Seahawk helicopter is a part of Helicopter Squadron Light (HSL) 46 whose home port is Mayport, Florida. Aboard the helicopter were Lt Terri Fussner, 27 of Manchester, Missouri; Lt Wayne Roberts, 34, of Brooklyn, New York; and Jason Lawson, 21, of Smyrna, Georgia. «We are working under the pretense that they are alive,» Chief Al Bloom, a spokesman for the Sixth Fleet told The Associated Press. The Sixth Fleet announced that the navy will open an investigation into the crash.