The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard are searching today for three missing aviators that were aboard a Navy E-2C Hawkeye aircraft that crashed off the Virginia coast last night.
The Navy says the E-2C Hawkeye aircraft crashed about 11 p.m. yesterday after taking off from the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman.
The Hawkeye is from Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 120, based at the Norfolk Naval Station. The squadron trains pilots and naval flight officers before they are assigned to operational fleet squadrons.
The Grumman E-2 Hawkeye is an all-weather, aircraft carrier-based tactical Airborne Early Warning aircraft. It is powered by 2 turboprop engines. The E-2C Hawkeye normally carries a crew of 5, including two pilots and three naval flight officers.
The Hawkeye's comparatively low mishap record makes it one of the Navy's safest planes. Since 1980, the Hawkeye has had 12 "Class A" mishaps, which involve either a fatality, total loss of the plane or at least $1 million in damage.
The last fatal crash of a Hawkeye was in 1993, when an E-2C went into the Ionian Sea off the coast of Italy, killing all five crew members. The plane had monitored air drops of relief supplies in Bosnia-Herzegovina and was on its way back to the Norfolk-based aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt. In 1992, all five crew members were killed when a Navy E-2C crashed into the Atlantic near Puerto Rico during a routine training flight. A Florida-based Coast Guard E-2C caught fire and crashed near a U.S. naval station in Puerto Rico in 1990, killing all four men aboard.
The Navy is investigating.
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