Navy "Hawkeye" radar plane crash off Maryland/Virginia coast kills one and injures two
Ocean City, Md. — A U.S. Navy aircraft with three people aboard crashed in waters near the Eastern Shore boundary of Virginia and Maryland Wednesday evening, killing one, authorities said.
Lt. Cmdr. Rob Myers, a public affairs officer with Naval Air Force Atlantic, told The Associated Press the plane was conducting routine flight operations in the vicinity of Wallops Island, Virginia, when it went down around 7:30 p.m.
The two injured were rescued by the U.S. Coast Guard and one was found dead in the aircraft, an E2-D Hawkeye, Myers said.
A statement released by Myers at Naval Air Force Atlantic in Virginia said the two crewmembers have injuries that aren't considered life-threatening.
The Navy said the identities of the crew members weren't being released -- pending notification of next of kin of the one whose life was lost and out of privacy concerns for the other two.
The plane, an advanced tactical airborne early warning aircraft – a radar plane, CBS News national security correspondent David Martin explains – is based out of Naval Station Norfolk and assigned to an East Coast Airborne Command and Control Squadron.
Ryan Whittington, a spokesman for Maryland's Ocean City Fire Department, told The Associated Press that it and other agencies were on the scene after the plane went down in Chincoteague Bay near the community of Stockton.
Whittington said a volunteer fire department in Stockton was the first to respond after getting a call around 7:30 p.m., and other agencies assisted.
He said waters in the bay were relatively calm as divers from his fire department and one other helped rescue two people from the plane. He added that they were taken to a hospital.
"One person was stuck in the plane,'' Whittington said, adding crews were working to remove the third person.
Whittington said emergency responders were staged at a George Island Landing, an area just on the Maryland side of the line with Virginia on the west side of Chincoteague Bay. The Eastern Shore location is about 150 miles east-southeast of Washington, D.C