VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Editor's Note: The above video is from a 20th-anniversary memorial service that took place on March 3, 2021.
Thursday marks 21 years since the worst peacetime aviation disaster in National Guard history.
On March 3, 2001, 18 local members of the 203rd Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers (Red Horse) Squadron as well as three Florida Army National Guard aviators were killed. Their C-23 Sherpa crashed in a cotton field near Unadilla, Georgia, as they were returning from Florida to NAS Oceana.
Military investigators blamed it on cargo displacement, which was said to have caused aircraft instability. But the general who ordered the investigation ruled that wind shear and powerful storms caused the plane to go down.
The disaster marked the worst loss of life in the Virginia National Guard since World War II. The names of the fallen airmen are forever etched in stone at their home base, the State Military Reservation, Camp Pendleton.