Two Nellis airmen among four dead, three wounded in Afghanistan

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Two airmen from Nellis Air Force Base and two others from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona were killed when their helicopter crashed Wednesday in Afghanistan’s volatile Helmand province.

Three other Nellis airmen were wounded in what NATO officials have said was an attack on their rescue helicopter.

Nellis officials and the Pentagon said the dead airmen were 1st Lt. Joel C. Gentz, 25, of Grass Lake, Mich., a combat rescue officer assigned to the 58th Rescue Squadron at Nellis, and Staff Sgt. David C. Smith, a 26-year-old flight engineer from Eight Mile, Ala., who was assigned to the 66th Rescue Squadron at Nellis.

“My husband and I are very proud of our son and all the pararescue officers and the PJs (pararescue jumpers) they work with,” Gentz’s mother, Judy Gentz, said Thursday from Dover, Del., where she and her husband, Steven, were waiting for their son’s body to be flown from Afghanistan.

“Joel, in the spirit of his line of duty, would have rescued the people who shot them down if they needed it. That was his job,” she said.

Judy Gentz said her son was an ROTC aerospace engineering student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. After he graduated in 2005, he was offered a chance to be a pilot “which he turned down to do combat rescue. The reason was, he told his commander, is that both of his parents are nurses and rescuing is in his blood.”

She said, “He loved his job, he loved his country and, more than anything else in the world, he love his wife,” Kathryn Gentz of Indiana.

Attempts to reach Smith’s family were unsuccessful.

The two dead airmen from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base were Tech Sgt. Michael P. Flores, 31, of San Antonio and Senior Airman Benjamin D. White, 24, of Erwin, Tenn. Both were assigned to the 48th Rescue Squadron at Davis-Monthan.

The attack occurred when their HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter was responding to evacuate casualties in Helmand province’s Sangin district.

The names of the three wounded airmen were not released, but Nellis officials said they were being sent to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany for treatment.

A NATO spokesman, Lt. Col. Joseph T. Breasseale, said the four airmen died “after their helicopter was brought down by hostile fire.”

The Taliban claimed responsibility, with spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi saying militants hit the rescue helicopter with two rockets.

Previous published reports said the helicopter was attempting to extract wounded British soldiers. A provincial spokesman has said the insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades to bring down the helicopter.

Lt. Col. James McElhenney, deputy commander of the 563rd Rescue Group, read a statement Thursday outside the Nellis main gate.

“All seven airmen involved in this incident embody the rescue motto, ‘that others may live,’ and were serving their country with distinction,” he said.

In a statement released earlier Thursday, Col. Gary Henderson, commander of the 23rd Wing at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., said, “Our hearts go out to the families of these brave Americans, and we express our deepest condolences to them.”

The deaths of Gentz and Smith bring to 68 the number of U.S. military personnel with ties to Nevada who have died in the nation’s wars overseas since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.

June has been one of the deadliest months in the nine-year war in Afghanistan, with at least 17 U.S. military personnel killed this week.

Wednesday’s helicopter crash was among the deadliest in the war.

On June 28, 2005, a Special Forces Chinook helicopter was shot down, killing 16 U.S. personnel including Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Shane Patton of Boulder City.

Army National Guard Chief Warrant Officer-3 John M. Flynn of Sparks and Sgt. Patrick D. Stewart of Fernley were killed in a September 2005 helicopter crash in Afghanistan.

In May 2006, Army Sgt. John Griffith of Henderson and nine of his comrades were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter tumbled down a mountainside in Afghanistan and exploded in the rugged Kunar province.

Review-Journal writer Lawrence Mower and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact reporter Keith Rogers at krogers@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0308.