THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Sunday, March 17, 1996                 TAG: 9603170110
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: FINAL 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 
DATELINE: JACKSONVILLE, FLA.                 LENGTH: Short :   48 lines

NAVY SEARCHES FOR S-3 VIKING PILOTS PLANE CRASHED SOON AFTER IT TOOK OFF FROM NORFOLK-BASED SHIP.

The Navy searched waters off Puerto Rico on Saturday for two pilots from the Norfolk-based carrier John C. Stennis whose plane crashed during a routine exercise. Both men were presumed dead.

The S-3 Viking plane piloted by Lt. Thomas P. Wilcox III and Lt. Donald R. Cioffi crashed shortly after takeoff from the Stennis on Friday night, naval officials said.

``The plane was launched successfully; there seems to be no particular cause,'' said Cmdr. Kevin Wensing of the Naval Airforce Atlantic Fleet in Norfolk.

The crash happened a week after a Marine Corps F-18 Hornet went down off Charleston, S.C., with two pilots aboard and two weeks after the Navy grounded its F-14s for three days after recent crashes killed four pilots and three civilians.

The search for the Marine pilots was called off March 10.

The Stennis, the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, commissioned in December, is on a seven-week training exercise in the Caribbean with a crew of 4,500.

The S-3 Viking, designed to carry four people, was on an in-flight refueling mission. Wilcox, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, and Cioffi, of Freehold, N.J., both 30, were the only pilots aboard. They were assigned to the Cecil Field-based Sea Control Squadron 24.

The plane crashed less than a mile from the Stennis, and there was no indication the pilots ejected, Wensing said.

The Laboon, a guided-missile destroyer, and helicopters searched the waters, but no survivors or debris had been found by Saturday. The search was called off at sunset.

Wensing called the Viking a safe aircraft. ``A crash is extremely rare,'' he said, noting that this also is the Atlantic Fleet's first accident this year.

The most recent crash of an S-3 Viking was in July 1995 during a training mission 130 miles southwest of San Diego in the Pacific Ocean. All four crew members in that crash were rescued.

KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE ACCIDENT MILITARY U.S. NAVY by CNB