YAKIMA COUNTY — Aerial search crews located the wreckage of the EA-18G Growler that crashed on Tuesday. The crash site, located just after 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, rests on a mountainside east of Mount Rainier.
The status of the two crew members is unknown while the search effort continues, according to a press release from the U.S. Navy.
An Emergency Operations Center has been established on NAS Whidbey Island to coordinate response efforts, and the Navy is making preparations to deploy personnel to secure the remote area that is not accessible by motorized vehicles.
“I am thankful for the tremendous teamwork displayed by the NAS Whidbey Island squadrons — VAQ, VP, VQ, TOCRON 10 and SAR — as Team Whidbey continues to respond to our tragic mishap,” said Capt. David Ganci, commander, Electronic Attack Wing, U.S. Pacific Fleet. “I am also grateful to local law enforcement, responders and tribal communities whose partnership has been essential in planning our critical next steps for access to the site.”
The Navy has not identified the two crew members.
The cause of the crash, which took place after 3 p.m. Tuesday, was being investigated, the Navy said.
The Boeing EA-18G Growler, a specialized electronic attack aircraft, is part of the Navy’s “first line of defense in hostile environments,” according to its website. It is used by the VAQ-130 squadron, the oldest electronic warfare squadron in the U.S. Navy, known as the “Zappers.”
The squadron had returned to Whidbey Island from a recent deployment, the Navy said in its statement on Tuesday. It had carried out operations in the Southern Red Sea, Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden to “maintain the freedom of navigation in international waterways,” the Navy said in an earlier statement about the deployment.
During the nine-month deployment, the squadron had conducted nearly 700 combat missions to “degrade the Houthi capability to threaten innocent shipping,” the release said.
The Houthis, the de facto government in northern Yemen that is backed by Iran, have launched attacks on ships sailing through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, a crucial shipping route.
All but one of the squadrons using the EA-18G Growler are based at the naval station on Whidbey Island. The station had notified the public of scheduled training operations this week.
Military training flights have led to dangerous and even fatal crashes in recent years. In August, an Army helicopter crashed during a routine training at a military base in Alabama, killing a flight instructor and injuring a student pilot. In 2021, a military training jet crashed into a backyard in Lake Worth, Texas, injuring the plane’s two pilots and damaging several homes.
