Fox News reports that a US Marine Corps MV-22 crashed off the coast of Australia with an uncertain number of Marines aboard.
Officials said small boats and aircrafts from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unite and Bonhomme Richard Expeditionary Strike Group are conducting the search and rescue operations.
Fox broadcast news reports that 23 Marines have been rescued from the crash, but three others are still missing.
The Navy has also released the name of a sailor for whom they are searching near the Philippines, according to Fox News. He went missing from USS Stethem.
Lt. Steven Hopkins disappeared just weeks after he checked aboard the guided-missile destroyer to be the ship’s chief engineer.
Hopkins graduated from the Citadel in 2009 and served previous tours of duty aboard two other warships.
His disappearance remains under investigation, Navy officials said.
The ship was about 140 miles west of Subic Bay, Philippines, at the time when Hopkins’ disappearance was noticed.
The Chinese Navy has assisted in the search for the officer.
The serch for LT Hopkins has been suspended according to Stars & Stripes.
Approximately 10,000 square nautical miles of ocean was searched in 79 hours, the statement said. When Hopkins was not found after more than three days, the effort was called off at 4 p.m. Friday Japan time.
Damn that sucks. Looks like the helo dunker training paid off though.
Fvck the helo dunker. That thing does save lives though.
Hope they find the 3 remaining Marines.
A string of fatal Marine aviation crashes….
Flying is always inherently risky, and even the best flying machines have lots of things that can go wrong. Just glad to hear that most of the men aboard have been rescued, praying for the other three.
Please keep the missing and injured in your thoughts.
This is hard to type but must say that all know there is some lack of maintenance, training, parts that affect all services.
I thought the Marines were in a study concerning recent flight issues. Sometimes we no longer have the “best flying machines” and there is a known cost.
This is wrong and ask your congressional member to consider these issues.
Prayers for all.
Prayers for those Marines, especially those not found yet.
Maybe you Marine guys can help me out. Is it just me or does it seems like a lot of MV-22’s crash? I don’t remember reading as much about standard helos crashing as I do the Osprey.
It seems the Cops has had 2 or 3 other incidents in the last few years. Maybe it’s that we’re reading about more Marine Corps mishaps (i.e. recent C130 crash, and so on). Pray they recover the missing.
I heard from one source that the V22 Osprey is sometimes a helicopter, sometimes an airplane and at other times a hunk of scrap metal that the US Military once considered a perfectly good aircraft.
I used to love reading the “cruise books” my father got from each cruise to WESTPAC. The major thing about them that sticks in my memory is that each of them had a picture(s) on the first page with the caption “Dedicated to ……..”. It seemed like there was always at least one sailor who was lost on each cruise.
Prayers for the Marines.
I hate to nitpick and be a spelling nazi but the plural for aircraft is aircraft. Adding the “s” is improper as well as sounding wrong.
Maybe now that we don’t have to pay for military transgender surgeries and drugs, we’ll have money for training (on actual war-fighting skills) and maintenance.