Four Aviators Lost In Viking Crash

Four VS-35 aviators killed in a routine training mission were remembered in a missing man formation of S-3Bs during memorial services last August over the carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74). The aviators — Lt. Patrick Sean Myrick, Lt. James Joseph Pupplo, Lt. Cmdr. Scott Allen Zellem, and AT2 Joshua Brent Showalte — died when their aircraft impacted Kita Iwo Jima, an uninhabited island north of Iwo Jima. More than a thousand officers and crew assembled on the flight deck for the memorial ceremony. The training mission was part of a joint exercise between the Stennis and USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) carrier strike groups in the western Pacific.