The Royal Navy has announced the death of a service member following a training incident that occurred last night.
The incident involved a Merlin Mk4 helicopter and took place in the English Channel near Dorset.
In their statement, the Royal Navy said, “It is with great sadness that we must report a member of the Royal Navy has died following a training incident last night.”
The statement further conveyed, “Our thoughts are with the family – who have been informed – and all those affected at this sad time. A full investigation will take place.”
The Royal Navy detailed that the incident occurred while the Merlin Mk4 helicopter was conducting night flying exercises with HMS Queen Elizabeth.
The statement clarified, “The incident involved a Merlin Mk4 helicopter in the English Channel near Dorset that ditched while conducting night flying exercises with HMS Queen Elizabeth. There were no other fatalities or serious injuries.”
A thorough investigation into the incident will be conducted to determine the causes and ensure future training exercises maintain the highest safety standards. The Royal Navy is focused on supporting the affected family and personnel during this difficult time.
Absolutely tragic, all the crew will have been longing to get back to sea and actually start flying ops again.
Terribly sad moment.
RIP – fair weather and blue skies.
Thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those involved and all the ship mates following this tragic incident
Extremely sad news. Training, even in safe waters is always dangerous. Especially at night. And operating from a carrier is as challenging environment as it gets.
I thought that plonking a chopper on the back of a frigate in crap weather at night was as bad as it gets.
Not a lot to choose between them I suppose.
I was generalising. Any maritime environment is challenging for aviation operations.
What a pendantic comment
If you say so, very nice.
I suspect that there is a rather profound difference.
always a sad moment when I hear that one of our heroes lives are lost in an accident.RIP.
Fair winds and following seas – RIP
Sad news. RIP.
Merlin ditched, shouldn´t have floaters. Maybe no time to deploy them?
It was only one person that died and I assume there would have been at least 2 crew on board likely more and so possible they did deploy but rough landing never the less.
They do have emergency floats that are supposed to deploy when entering water. Not knowing details of the incident, I wouldn’t like to comment or speculate on what went wrong.
Thoughts go out to all those involved with this tragic loss.
It’s dreadful news. Considering Merlin has three engines, it has exceptional levels of redundancy, you can only assume it was a catastrophic failure of dynamic components…
Very sad, despite the tremendous reliability of modern military aircraft, there is always the element of danger, especially at Sea…
What dreadful news. Night flying in helicopters is always difficult. My thoughts are with the deceased family, friends and shipmates
Terrible news so sorry for the family RIP
RIP. Thoughts and condolences to the families and shipmates involved.
To the survivors, get back up, soonest.
Very sad news. Condolences to the family, friends and shipmates.
Terrible news. RIP, another of our nations heroes.
Condolences to the service member lost, Dread to think the outcome if they were ferrying pax
Tragic news, RIP
RIP fair sea’s blue sky’s. 🇬🇧🏴