Helo Lost in the Mediterranean

Pilot Fighter said:
Like many, I was assuming Navy aircraft. Given it’s a 160th bird, wouldn’t be surprised if there were Navy casualties.

Click to expand...

I removed a mention of the F35 since no articles have it any longer. I know some articles made mention of it. The number of fatalities threw me off. Reading several articles now it seems to have been an Army Helo. The question I wondered was what would they have been refueling.... I know there is only one carrier in the Med currently and it was made to handle the F35 so perhaps....The other carrier in the area (not in the Med or Red Sea) does not have any F35s attached......
 
JEP said:
I removed a mention of the F35 since no articles have it any longer. I know some articles made mention of it. The number of fatalities threw me off. Reading several articles now it seems to have been an Army Helo. The question I wondered was what would they have been refueling.... I know there is only one carrier in the Med currently and it was made to handle the F35 so perhaps....The other carrier in the area (not in the Med or Red Sea) does not have any F35s attached......
Click to expand...

I never saw any articles that mentioned an F-35.

The MH-60 or MH-47 would have been receiving fuel. Given the nature of 160th ops, don’t expect too many details.
 
Pilot Fighter said:
I never saw any articles that mentioned an F-35.

The MH-60 or MH-47 would have been receiving fuel. Given the nature of 160th ops, don’t expect too many details.
Click to expand...

Now that I’d believe. I am surprised there hasnt been anything on the the from/to aircraft.
 
JEP said:
Now that I’d believe. I am surprised there hasnt been anything on the the from/to aircraft.
Click to expand...

The 160th is a special operations regiment, don’t expect a detailed play-by-play.

Air-to-air refueling would have likely been a Herc. Pretty sure they can also HIFR from the deck.
 
Last edited:
JEP said:
I removed a mention of the F35 since no articles have it any longer. I know some articles made mention of it. The number of fatalities threw me off. Reading several articles now it seems to have been an Army Helo. The question I wondered was what would they have been refueling.... I know there is only one carrier in the Med currently and it was made to handle the F35 so perhaps....The other carrier in the area (not in the Med or Red Sea) does not have any F35s attached......
Click to expand...

IIRC, one of the ESB ships is in the Med right now with the response to the trouble in Israel and the 160th is known to operate off of them. They might have been involved.
 
www.dailymail.co.uk

Five US Spec Ops troops are killed in Mediterranean Sea crash

The MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was on a refueling training mission when it crashed off the coast of Cyprus late Friday. Special forces are in the region amid the Israel-Hamas war.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk



My heart goes out to our troops, who are simply following their orders and doing their jobs.



Why the eff did we send US troops towards Israel? We had no business being there. They would be alive if we hadn't sent troops near Israel.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
www.dailymail.co.uk

Five US Spec Ops troops are killed in Mediterranean Sea crash

The MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was on a refueling training mission when it crashed off the coast of Cyprus late Friday. Special forces are in the region amid the Israel-Hamas war.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk



My heart goes out to our troops, who are simply following their orders and doing their jobs.



Why the eff did we send US troops towards Israel? We had no business being there. They would be alive if we hadn't sent troops near Israel.
Click to expand...

It's the nature of the business Cherokee. I had my last deployment on active duty, go from a scheduled 6 month non-combat deployment, to an 11 month tour of the north Arabian Sea (and also Afghanistan, again). All because of Iran. You can insert any world crisis. We will go there, or near. That isn't to say this isn't terrible news, but this sort of thing is what we knowingly volunteered for (I don't mean death, I mean being a tool of diplomacy, amongst many other missions). Statistically in my world, you are most likely to die in a training event anyway, whether that be overseas, or right here in the USA. It just is what it is, risk of the lifestyle I suppose. They'd be flying high risk sorties somewhere else if they hadn't been there.
 
///AMG said:
It's the nature of the business Cherokee. I had my last deployment on active duty, go from a scheduled 6 month non-combat deployment, to an 11 month tour of the north Arabian Sea (and also Afghanistan, again). All because of Iran. You can insert any world crisis. We will go there, or near. That isn't to say this isn't terrible news, but this sort of thing is what we knowingly volunteered for (I don't mean death, I mean being a tool of diplomacy, amongst many other missions). Statistically in my world, you are most likely to die in a training event anyway, whether that be overseas, or right here in the USA. It just is what it is, risk of the lifestyle I suppose. They'd be flying high risk sorties somewhere else if they hadn't been there.
Click to expand...

I get that, and my comment isn’t towards the many services men/women simply doing their jobs they have been ordered to do.



It’s just a crap foreign policy that ends up putting people in situations that they should not have been put in by this administration (and those past, so not just a slight at Biden).
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
I get that, and my comment isn’t towards the many services men/women simply doing their jobs they have been ordered to do.



It’s just a crap foreign policy that ends up putting people in situations that they should not have been put in by this administration (and those past, so not just a slight at Biden).
Click to expand...

I think we can all argue about crap foreign policy. It is what it is. My point is that the risk of dying in an aviation accident is no higher over there than it is back home, be it flying non-combat ops from a different home plate, or in the apparent safety of CONUS. It is risky either place, especially given the unique types of flying the 160th routinely does. I can't speak for those guys, but in my world of mil aviation, the most realistic (and inherently risky) training was conducted out in the deserts of the USA. Far more dangerous than anything I even did in combat. Granted their "combat" is not my "combat", however, this was neither.
 
I think that claim maybe should be backed up with a story. FWIW my point is not that overseas flying isn't dangerous, just that all of our flying can be, wherever it may be. Anyway, one story that I'll probably never forget is dropping a few thousand pounds of live bombs on a training range in NV, and then egressing from the target area. We got lit up by surface to air missile sites around it, and they started firing the "smoky SAMs" at us. It was me, leading a weapon school instructor in a different airplane. I did my missile defenses, and had been bled down and they got me low......500 AGL. I lost sight of the wingman, and remember looking in the HUD and seeing the A/A TACAN between our two aircraft when the range went to 0.0 NM. I figured we were about to have a midair, or the tacan was wonky (they sometimes jump around with erroneous readings). We get back to the debrief, and I ask him where he was, and he said "below you....saw you the whole time". So to summarize, he was probably at about 100 AGL, doing the same thing as me, under G, etc. Another time, I won't bore you with the details about how it happened (it was a nav system degrade at the heart of it), but I saw a flicker of an airplane, that was one of the "red air" flash from left to right, immediately below me. They had no idea I was where I was, and by design, I didn't know they were there either. Came within 50' of being pink mist. Off the coast of NC. I can think of probably a dozen more of these stories, or more.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
I get that, and my comment isn’t towards the many services men/women simply doing their jobs they have been ordered to do.



It’s just a crap foreign policy that ends up putting people in situations that they should not have been put in by this administration (and those past, so not just a slight at Biden).
Click to expand...

If we can't come to the aid of an ally who just had 1,200 mostly civilians murdered by a terrorist organization, then why have a military at all? I'm not rah rah Israel by any means, but we drug a lot of our allies into a decades long war after 3,000 of ours were murdered.
 
Ian_J said:
How do you figure that? There was an awful Army helicopter crash a few years ago off the coast of Louisiana. I guess we shouldn’t send troops to Louisiana either?
Click to expand...

That accident. One of my coworkers was in that unit at the time. One of those frustrating ones.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
www.dailymail.co.uk

Five US Spec Ops troops are killed in Mediterranean Sea crash

The MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter was on a refueling training mission when it crashed off the coast of Cyprus late Friday. Special forces are in the region amid the Israel-Hamas war.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk



My heart goes out to our troops, who are simply following their orders and doing their jobs.



Why the eff did we send US troops towards Israel? We had no business being there. They would be alive if we hadn't sent troops near Israel.
Click to expand...

The units in question they were there to support specialize in hostage rescue.

They didn’t “put themselves” in that position, they are responding to Hamas taking US citizens hostage in Gaza to allow the combatant command options in facilitating their rescue.


Have you ever heard the expression “you were offered the option to shut up, but refused to take it?” This is one of those examples.

Steve and Shane were friends of mine.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Murdoughnut said:
If we can't come to the aid of an ally who just had 1,200 mostly civilians murdered by a terrorist organization, then why have a military at all? I'm not rah rah Israel by any means, but we drug a lot of our allies into a decades long war after 3,000 of ours were murdered.
Click to expand...

And those were unnecessary wars and attacked countries that weren’t even represented by the 19 hijackers.

As I said, our policy (especially when it comes to the Middle East and brown countries) just sucks.

I never knew Democrats were such the war party. Hopefully I never hear anti-war as a reason to vote D by someone.
 
Cherokee_Cruiser said:
And those were unnecessary wars and attacked countries that weren’t even represented by the 19 hijackers.

As I said, our policy (especially when it comes to the Middle East and brown countries) just sucks.

I never knew Democrats were such the war party. Hopefully I never hear anti-war as a reason to vote D by someone.
Click to expand...

Everyone should be anti war to the extent you can be. I don't give a damn about either Israel or Ukraine, but I do think authoritarian regimes and religious extremist groups are the two greatest threats to civilized, democratic society. We go to war to protect them so they'll do the same when we're on the other end.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top