Five Navy airmen died early Friday when their E-2C Hawkeye surveillance plane crashed into the sea while returning to the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Ionian Sea.
They were members of the Norfolk-based Carrier Airborne Early Warning Squadron 124.
The victims are Lt. Cmdr. Jon A. Rystrom, 38, of Stromburg, Neb.; Lt. William R. Dyer, 26, of Cookeville, Tenn.; Lt. Robert A. Forwalder, 25, of Uniontown, Ohio; Lt. Patrick J. Ardaiz, 28, of Baltimore; and Lt. John A. Messier, 30, of Bellevue, Wash.
President Clinton said, ”They made America proud, and I want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the relatives and the shipmates of those five servicemen,” the Washington Post reported.
The plane went down shortly before 1 a.m. one mile from the Norfolk-based carrier, which had just arrived in the Ionian Sea on a six-month European deployment. The E-2C was one of two that had flown their first mission off the Yugoslav coast, covering U.S. cargo planes dropping food to besieged Muslims in Bosnia.
The plane’s first approach to the carrier deck for landing was aborted, said Cmdr. Steve Honda of the Atlantic Fleet’s Naval Air Force, “They had a `foul deck waveoff,’ which means the flight deck was not ready to receive them,” said Honda. “That is not unusual.”
Approximately one mile past the front end of the carrier, the plane crashed into the water, Honda said. He said the planes had been in international airspace and said that the incident “is not related to any hostile fire from the former Yugoslavia.”
