{"id":25547,"date":"2025-10-27T15:32:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T15:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/25547\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T15:32:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T15:32:10","slug":"crews-safe-after-jet-helicopter-from-navys-oldest-carrier-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/25547\/","title":{"rendered":"Crews safe after jet, helicopter from Navy’s oldest carrier crash"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a>The USS Nimitz heads out of San Diego Bay for deployment in 2020. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times of San Diego)<\/p>\n

A fighter jet and a helicopter based off the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz<\/a> both crashed into the South China Sea within 30 minutes of each other, the Navy\u2019s Pacific Fleet reported.<\/p>\n

The three crew members of the MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter were rescued on Sunday afternoon, and the two aviators in the F\/A-18F Super Hornet fighter jet ejected and were recovered safely, and all five \u201care safe and in stable condition,\u201d the fleet said in a statement.<\/p>\n

The causes of the two crashes were under investigation, the statement said.<\/p>\n

The Nimitz, commissioned in 1975, is the oldest active carrier and was long based in San Diego.<\/p>\n

The warship is on its final deployment before decommissioning. It is returning to Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state after having been deployed to the Middle East for most of the summer as part of the U.S. response to attacks by Yemen\u2019s Houthi rebels on commercial shipping. <\/p>\n

President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Tokyo on Monday, said the crashes could have been caused by \u201cbad fuel.\u201d He ruled out foul play and said there was \u201cnothing to hide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another aircraft carrier, the USS Harry S. Truman, suffered a series of mishaps in recent months while deployed to the Middle East.<\/p>\n

In December, the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg\u00a0mistakenly shot down an F\/A-18<\/a>\u00a0jet from the Truman.<\/p>\n

Then, in April, another F\/A-18 fighter jet slipped off the Truman\u2019s hangar deck and\u00a0fell into the Red Sea<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And in May, an F\/A fighter jet landing on the carrier in the Red Sea\u00a0went overboard<\/a>\u00a0after apparently failing to catch the steel cables used to stop landing planes and forcing its two pilots to eject.<\/p>\n

No sailors were killed in any of those mishaps. The results of investigations into those incidents have yet to be released.<\/p>\n

The Nimitz is scheduled to be replaced by the new USS John F. Kennedy, the second of the Ford-class of nuclear-powered supercarriers.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press contributed to this article.<\/p>\n

READ NEXT\n\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The USS Nimitz heads out of San Diego Bay for deployment in 2020. (File photo by Chris Stone\/Times…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[19560,19561,19562,74,76,75,19130,19134],"class_list":["post-25547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-aircraft-carriers","tag-f-a-18f-super-hornet","tag-mh-60r-sea-hawk","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-south-china-sea","tag-uss-nimitz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}