Posted on: Saturday, July 2, 2005

MILITARY AFFAIRS
6 SEALs identified in crash of copter

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

A photo of Pearl Harbor-based SEAL Dan Healy and one of his daughters, who was unidentified, was released to a New Hampshire newspaper. The family has confirmed Healy was killed in Afghanistan. Healy family via Manchester, N.H., Union Leader

Grief poured in from Hawai'i and around the world yesterday for eight Navy SEALs, some of whom were based at Pearl Harbor, and eight Army airmen killed in a rescue operation in Afghanistan.

As the nation prepared to celebrate an Independence Day weekend, the names of those killed began to trickle out in media reports from across the country, bringing emotional reactions and promises of support.

Among those killed when their helicopter was shot down Tuesday was Senior Chief Petty Officer Dan Healy, 36, a Pearl Harbor-based SEAL.

His ex-wife, Robyn Healy, lives in Honolulu with the couple's two daughters, Sasha, 5, and Jasmine, 7.

Robyn Healy said yesterday both her daughters are doing OK under the circumstances. Sasha is too young to know what happened, but her older sister took the news hard.

"I told Jasmine this morning," said Robyn Healy, who was married to Dan Healy for almost five years. "She understands. She's very sad."

Healy was a devoted father who stayed in touch with his children no matter where he was, she said.

"Jasmine always knew where he was. She would turn on the 6 o'clock news at night to see if she could see her daddy on TV."

Even those who didn't know the victims personally seemed touched by the tragedy.

"You'll will forever be in my heart and prayers," Kim Klopotek, the wife of a Navy man in Honolulu, wrote to an Advertiser on-line tribute column. "I have so much pride in all that the services do for us as Americans. May we always remember our heroes, past and present."

So far, media reports have identified six SEALs who went down in the chopper: Healy; Marcus Luttrell, of Texas; Lt. Michael McGreevy, of Portville, New York; Petty Officer 1st Class Jeff Taylor, 30, of Little Creek, Va.; Jeffrey Alan Lucas, 33, of Corbett, Ore.; and Petty Officer 2nd Class Shane Patton, 22, of Boulder City, Nev.

So far, only Healy is confirmed to have been based in Pearl Harbor. McGreevy, Taylor and Lucas were based in Virginia Beach, Va. Home ports for Luttrell and Patton were unavailable. The Navy has not officially released any names.

Meanwhile, on the ground in the rugged mountain area where the men's helicopter was shot down, an intense search was under way for four other SEALs missing since Tuesday.

There was cautious optimism that at least some of the four would be found alive, but a purported Taliban spokesman said militants captured one of the men.

Also, American warplanes bombed a suspected Taliban compound in an area where the U.S. team has been missing, a U.S. military spokesman said today. It was not clear if there were any casualties from the air strike.

U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara did not say if the air strike was directly related to the missing SEALs.

Elsewhere, 18 rebels and two Afghan soldiers were killed in an assault on a Taliban hideout in mountains in central Afghanistan where about 100 insurgents were thought to be camped, Uruzgan provincial Gov. Jan Mohammed Khan said.

The MH-47 Chinook helicopter — carrying 16 people, including the eight SEALs and eight Army airmen — was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade when it went into the mountains near the Pakistan border to rescue the four SEALs.

At least some of the SEALs killed were part of the elite Pearl Harbor-based Advanced SEAL Delivery Team, which last year celebrated the completion of a new $47 million waterfront home on 22 acres at Pearl City Peninsula.

Little is publicly known about the team of 45 officers and 230 enlisted personal — including 93 of the Sea, Air, Land commandos — who quietly conduct special operations in the Pacific and Central Command areas.

Four days after the helicopter crash, details about the aborted rescue mission remained murky.

But military officials said there was guarded optimism that some or all four members of the missing SEALs, from a unit based in Virginia, could be alive.

Radio transmissions had given U.S. forces more hope than they had had the previous day that the missing SEALs had survived, a Pentagon official told the Army Times yesterday.

U.S. military officials dismissed a report by a purported Taliban spokesman that one of the men had been captured.

O'Hara said "all available assets" were being used to find the men, but that the search had been hampered by the steep, forested terrain and the possibility that "at any turn the search can turn into a fire fight if we encounter enemy forces."

Military officials said it was unclear who had fired on the helicopter. In addition to al-Qaida fighters, insurgents linked to the Taliban militia and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a fugitive former Afghan official, are also reportedly operating in the area.

The incident came as U.S. and Afghan forces face growing violence from insurgent groups that appear to be numerous, well-equipped and intent on undermining Afghanistan's modicum of stability after two decades of civil strife, foreign military occupation and religious repression.

Tuesday's helicopter crash is the single-largest loss of life since U.S. forces went into Afghanistan. Hawai'i-based Marines were among the 27 troops who died in a January helicopter crash in Iraq, which was the deadliest single event in the Iraq war.

Interviews with families of the SEALs killed in the crash paint portraits of dedicated men who loved their dangerous occupation.

Natalie Healy said her son had been in the Navy for 15 years, during which time he had been stationed in both Virginia Beach and Hawai'i. For the past decade he had been living in Honolulu.

"He died for our freedoms," she said.

Lucas joined the Navy at age 17 and set his sights on becoming a SEAL, said his father, Rick. Jeff was always at the head of his class during training and became an expert marksman who could shoot a target with either hand, he said.

He remembered Jeff telling him that during basic training, recruits had to do a 2-mile nighttime swim as part of their training exercises one time. When they got to shore, a few of them asked for blankets because it was cold. The drill sergeant said if they wanted a blanket, they weren't Navy SEAL material. "He said, 'Dad, I never asked for a blanket,' " Rick Lucas said.

Government officials also paid tribute to those killed.

"Their deaths are a sobering reminder that the independence we celebrate this weekend was and is built on their sacrifice and that of too many others in a long line stretching back well over two centuries," said U.S. Rep. Ed Case.

"While much attention has been paid to the war in Iraq, this sad occasion reminds us that Americans have been fighting terrorism in Afghanistan even longer," said Mayor Mufi Hannemann.

As names of the victims continued to become public yesterday, the military also announced that it will begin providing increased death benefits to the next of kin of those killed in combat zones.

Last month, President Bush signed into law an increase in the death benefit from $12,000 to $100,000. The military said yesterday it was implementing the law retroactive to Oct 7, 2001.

Advertiser staff writers David Waite and Will Hoover, The Associated Press, Army Times and Washington Post contributed to this report.