Airmen race to rescue Navy helicopter crew

Air Force crews based at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, launched two HH-60W Jolly Green II helicopters on Aug. 10 to rescue five U.S. Navy personnel after a training mishap near Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, California, according to the service. No injuries were reported.

The response involved Airmen from the 355th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, part of the 355th Wing but geographically located at Nellis, and aircrews from the 88th Test and Evaluation Squadron. The 88th TES received word from the Air Force Rescue Coordination Center at about 11:30 a.m. that a Navy MH-60S Seahawk had made a hard landing in mountainous terrain during a high-altitude training flight, prompting an immediate unit recall and aircraft generation tasking.

Staff Sgt. Lucas Seney, an aerospace propulsion craftsman with the 355th AMXS, described the rapid shift from training to real-world response. “When production gave us the word for a real-world mission, I gathered the Airmen I had on the line and started directing traffic,” Seney said. “The crew worked well together, and I was proud to see just how efficiently everyone was able to get the job done.”

With parts unavailable to replace a faulty component, maintainers also had to troubleshoot on the fly to keep the sortie on track. “We diagnosed the master caution warning press-to-reset button as what was causing the circuit breaker to pop and provided aircrew with a workaround to keep the system operational and allow on-time takeoff,” Adams said.

Despite starting from a scheduled training day, the maintenance team had both helicopters ready in less than 30 minutes, a pace leaders credited to tight integration between maintenance and operations. “There’s an immense amount of trust, and that was evident,” said Lt. Col. Joshua Bedel, 355th AMXS commander. “You can tell there’s a deep respect for each other when it comes to getting that aircraft off the ground.”

Lt. Col. Kenneth “Buddy” Wilkins, the 88th TES commander and rescue mission flight lead, said repetition and shared experience were decisive. “What’s really nice about our organization, especially our relationship with the 355th AMXS, is that we’ve exercised this a number of times,” Wilkins said. “This mission was a really good example of us taking the lessons learned from those previous events and executing as quickly and efficiently as possible. Within five minutes, I knew we had tails. Within 30 minutes, they were ready for us to go out,” Wilkins said.

The HH-60Ws departed Nellis at 1:00 p.m. and made radio contact with the stranded Sailors around 3:00 p.m., then visually confirmed their location. A pararescue team led by Capt. John Howe inserted at a landing zone to assess the group and determined all were uninjured, then directed the helicopters to reposition closer to limit the Sailors’ physical strain. “It was a good call by the team getting on the ground, making a good patient assessment, and then solid planning on the aircrew side of the house to determine what our ragged-edge power margins were that we needed to get into the zone and get out,” Wilkins said.

Howe said the outcome reflected disciplined preparation and ready equipment. “The preparation is what makes the execution smooth,” Howe said. “It’s the combination of preestablished operating procedures, keeping equipment staged and ready for use, and hasty mission planning prior to departure, that makes this process effective, and expeditious.”

By 3:50 p.m., both helicopters had extracted all five Sailors and delivered them to their unit’s ramp at NAWS China Lake before returning to Nellis.

For the Airmen on the mission, the rescue was both a validation of training and a reminder of purpose. “The ability to have that impact is fulfilling,” Howe said. “That is why people join these career fields—because they want to have an impact and they want to be able to be there for their fellow service members in a time of need.”

Back on the flight line, maintainers said the result reinforced their daily efforts. “There’s an immense amount of pride. Those are our helicopters. Those are our aircrew going to save those lives. It’s an honor to be part of the team that made that happen,” Bedel said.

Wilkins added that the mission fit squarely within standard procedures. “We have trained our whole careers to execute in these circumstances, and we have prepared and executed so many similar missions, that to us, it just felt like Monday,” Wilkins said. “It feels great to do the mission and help those in need.”