The wreckage of a Navy EA-18G Growler aircraft that crashed near Mount Rainier was found Wednesday afternoon, according to news reports.
The fate of two crew members remained unknown, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island reported.
At 3:23 p.m., the Boeing-made aircraft from Electronic Attack Squadron 130 crashed east of the mountain on a routine training flight. The cause of the crash was unknown and under investigation. The identities of the missing pilots hadn’t been released, as of Wednesday afternoon.
Multiple search and rescue assets, including a Navy MH-60S helicopter, launched from the air station to locate the crew and examine the crash site 30 miles west of Yakima.
Responders faced mountainous terrain, cloudy weather and low visibility, according to the Naval air station’s Facebook page.
U.S. Navy Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron One (VQ-1), Patrol Squadron (VP-46), the air station’s Search and Rescue and U.S. Army 4-6 Air Cavalry Squadron out of Joint Base Lewis-McChord, have joined in the search.
According to a press release, the squadron, known as VAQ-130 or the “Zappers,” are based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island north of Oak Harbor and recently completed a combat deployment on the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.
While deployed, the squadron carried out operations in the Southern Red Sea, Bab al-Mandeb Strait and Gulf of Aden “to maintain the freedom of navigation in international waterways,” the Navy said in a press release in July.
Words can’t do justice to how proud I am of this ‘Zapper’ Team which performed their duty in combat amidst incredibly challenging circumstances for months on end, frequently not knowing what each day would bring,” Cmdr. Carl Ellsworth said in the press release. “The best of our country is right here at VAQ-130.”
The EA-18G Growler is a variant in the F/A-18 family of aircraft that combines the proven F/A-18F Super Hornet platform with a sophisticated electronic warfare suite. All EA-18G squadrons are stationed at NAS Whidbey Island, with the exception of one squadron (VAQ-141) attached to CVW-5, Forward Deployed Naval Force, based at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan.
This story originally appeared in the Whidbey News-Times, a sibling publication to The Herald.
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