VIRGINIA BEACH 
 
 The Navy identified the two sailors who died and a third, who went missing, after a Navy helicopter crashed into the frigid Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday, about 20 miles east of Cape Henry. 
 
 Lt. Wesley Van Dorn, 29, and Petty Officer 3rd Class Brian Collins, 25, died at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital Wednesday, officials told reporters at a Thursday afternoon news conference at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek. Both were members of Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14, based at Norfolk Naval Station. 
 
 The missing pilot, Lt. Sean Christopher Snyder, 39, of Santee, Calif., was identified by the Navy late this evening. 
 
 In a statement issued by the Navy, the Snyder family thanked the Navy, Coast Guard and Virginia Beach fire crews for their efforts to rescue him. 
 
 "At this time, our hearts and prayers are for Sean's recovery, the other families who have suffered loss, and for the health of the hospitalized sailors," the statement said. 
 
 Van Dorn, a pilot, was from Greensboro, N.C. and had served for more than six years. 
 
 Collins, an aircrewman, was from Truckee, Calif., and had been in the Navy about two years, officials said. 
 
 Four of the five crewmembers, including Van Dorn and Collins, were pulled from the water after the crash Wednesday morning. The search for Snyder has been ongoing. 
 
 The Coast Guard and Navy searched an area of more than 600 square miles before suspending its active search for the missing crew member at 3:30 this afternoon, said Coast Guard Capt. John Little said. Crews will continue working to recover wreckage and search for remains. 
 
 "It was a very challenging decision to make, but it's one that we felt we had to make," Little said. "It was an exhaustive search." 
 
 The Navy also requested assistance from the Virginia Beach fire and police departments again today. The Fire Department sent its mobile command center to First Landing State Park to be used as the Coast Guard's command post for the day, said Battalion Chief Amy Valdez. A fire boat with side-scan sonar capability assisted along with a police boat that has a tow sonar. 
 
 During a news conference this afternoon, the Navy said one sailor had been released from Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and a second was in stable condition. 
 
 The Navy promptly launched an investigation Wednesday to determine what caused the late-morning crash, but the day's efforts were focused on the five sailors who went down aboard the troubled aircraft. 
 
 With the water temperature around 40 degrees, Navy and Coast Guard officials feared their rescue mission could soon become a recovery operation. 
 
 The day began routinely enough, with two MH-53 Sea Dragons from Helicopter Mine Countermeasures Squadron 14, aka HM-14, leaving Norfolk Naval Station on a training mission. One of the aircraft made a distress call about 10:45 a.m., only moments before hitting the water. 
 
 It was unclear whether the crew performed an emergency water landing or lost control and crashed, said Capt. Todd Flannery, the commander of Helicopter Sea Combat Wing Atlantic. 
 
 "I don't know," said Flannery, repeating a line he uttered more than a half-dozen times during a somber news conference on the flight line where the downed aircraft had taken off hours earlier. "There's a lot we don't know right now." 
 
 After impact, the second helicopter dropped a raft into the water, and two crew members climbed in. 
 
 The Coast Guard cutter Shearwater was 2 miles away - close enough to hear but not see the crash - and made its way to the scene as the Navy dispatched two MH-60 Seahawks from Norfolk Naval Station. 
 
 The rescue helicopters arrived within 30 minutes of impact and hoisted the two sailors from the raft. Two other crew members were pulled from the chilly water about 45 minutes after the crash and were hoisted into the second Seahawk. The four sailors were flown to Norfolk General. Two died there, one was listed in serious condition, and the other was upgraded to fair. 
 
 When Virginia Beach rescue boats arrived near the crash location, they encountered a large debris field that spread over a half-mile area, Battalion Chief Tracy Freeman of the Virginia Beach Fire Department said. 
 
 Pieces of the helicopter were scattered across the water. A fireboat with side-scan sonar helped find the fuselage and tail section, which had sunk by the time rescue crews arrived. 
 
 The Coast Guard and Navy planned to search through the night for the fifth crew member. All would have been wearing survival suits for a flight over cold water, Flannery said, but it's unclear how long someone could survive in those conditions. 
 
 The Navy sent divers from Little Creek to the crash site. Other ships assisting the joint search and rescue operation include the guided missile destroyer Jason Dunham, the amphibious transport dock Mesa Verde, the salvage vessel Grasp and a cargo ship, the Medgar Evers. 
 
 At the Norfolk hospital, Chris Goetz said he saw two Navy helicopters land and drop off two crew members each. 
 
 "They came in fast, that's why I noticed," said Geotz, an electrician who was working at the facility. "They started screaming. The first person was unconscious, and his arms were dangling. The second person had his hands bandaged, and his face was burned, but at least he held his hands up." 
 
 Navy officials said they would not identify the crew members who died until 24 hours after relatives were notified. 
 
 "Our heartfelt thoughts and prayers go out to the families and the loved ones of those hurt and killed in today's crash," Flannery said. 
 
 Wednesday's crash was the second tragedy to strike the small MH-53 Sea Dragon community in as many years. It's also the latest accident for a workhorse airframe that the Navy had planned to retire more than five years ago. 
 
 According to the Naval Safety Center, the crash is the fourth major accident involving a Sea Dragon since 2012. MH-53s have crashed at a rate more than 10 times greater than other Navy helicopters over the past five years, according to the center's data. 
 
 Assigned to just two Norfolk-based squadrons, HM-14 and HM-15, Sea Dragons are equipped to detect and clear submerged mines - a critical capability in the Navy's mission of ensuring clear shipping channels abroad. The massive $50 million helicopters are also used to move people and cargo and are the Navy's preferred option for heavy-lift operations. 
 
 Sea Dragons were introduced to the fleet in the early 1980s. The service had planned to begin phasing them out in the mid-2000s, but without a viable replacement, it kept the Sea Dragons flying. The goal is to use them through 2025. 
 
 After a crash in July 2012 claimed the lives of two Norfolk-based sailors during a heavy-lift mission in Oman, the Navy uncovered systemic problems within the Sea Dragon community stemming from a lack of investment in the aging airframes. 
 
 "This didn't just happen overnight," Flannery said during a November interview with The Virginian-Pilot. "This was an atrophy over a long period of time, and the reason was, the Navy slowly but surely kind of forgot about the HM community.... It was absolutely tragic that it came to a head the way that it did." 
 
 After the Oman crash, the Navy invested millions of dollars to upgrade and better maintain its remaining 29 Sea Dragons, Flannery said in November. It added more than 100 maintenance personnel to the two Norfolk-based squadrons, enhanced pilot training and installed new leadership. 
 
 There are currently no plans to ground the Sea Dragons. 
 
 Asked Wednesday whether he had concerns about the safety of the MH-53s, Flannery said: "No, I don't. I do not." 
 
 Pilot reporters Cindy Clayton, Lauren King and Gary Harki contributed to this report. 
 
 Mike Hixenbaugh, 757-446-2949, mike.hixenbaugh@pilotonline.com ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 Crews searched along the fog-shrouded Florida coast on Wednesday, but seven Marines and four soldiers were feared dead after an Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a nighttime training exercise. 
 
 A spokesman at the Air Force base near where the chopper crashed, however, said crews were still in search-and-rescue mode even though a Pentagon official has said the 11 military members aboard are presumed dead. 
 
 Eglin Air Force Base spokesman Mike Spaits had said the search will continue throughout the night, but an "operational pause" was announced just before 9 p.m. because of weather. 
 
 "There is always room for optimism," he said. "The fog has been hampering our search efforts, and more fog is continuing to roll in." 
 
 Andy Bourland, another spokesman for the base, said that human remains had been found and that aircraft debris had washed ashore. It was too soon to say what caused the crash, but he told NBC News that there were "weather issues" overnight. 
 
 The Marines were from a special operations regiment at Camp LeJeune in North Carolina, Bourland said. The helicopters and air crew were assigned to the Army National Guard unit at Hammond, Louisiana. 
 
 President Barack Obama called the commanders of Marine special operations and the Louisiana Guard to express condolences, the White House said. 
 
 Maj. Gen. Glenn H. Curtis of the Louisiana National Guard told reporters at an afternoon news conference that “this will remain a search-and-rescue operation until further notice.” 
 
 He said that the pilots of both helicopters had extensive experience, and would have been aware of the weather when they took off. But “you can depart from one station and hit weather that you didn’t expect,” he said. 
 
 Curtis said the Louisiana Guard was supporting the Marines on the training mission, but he had no further details on the nature of it. The names of the 11 servicemembers were not immediately released. 
 
 If the worst fears are realized, it would be one of the greatest losses of life in military training in recent years. Seven Marines were killed in a mortar blast at an Army depot in Nevada in 2013, and seven were killed when two helicopters collided in Arizona in 2012. 
 
 The 11 servicemembers were aboard one of two UH-60 Black Hawks participating in the exercise. The second helicopter returned safely. 
 
 Mike Spaits, another spokesman for the base, confirmed that there were fatalities but told reporters “there’s always hope” for survivors. The aircraft debris, including the tail rotor of the downed chopper, was recovered by a Coast Guard vessel, officials told NBC News. 
 
 The helicopter was believed to have crashed at about 8:30 p.m. ET in Santa Rosa Sound, a narrow strip of water that separates the Florida Panhandle from a barrier island, just east of Pensacola. 
 
 Kim Urr, who works at the a campground near where the helicopter went down, told The Associated Press that she heard a strange sound followed by two explosions at about that time. 
 
 “It sounded like something metal either being hit or falling over, that’s what it sounded like,” she said. “And there were two booms afterward, similar to what you hear with ordnance booms, but more muffled.” 
 
 Pat Campbell, who lives in the nearby town of Navarre, said that he came home from dinner at about 8:30 and noticed a fuel smell, “just like the BP spill.” 
 
 On Wednesday, he said, “It’s very foggy. If we walk down on my dock, you see the glaze of the jet fuel on the water, and the smell is very strong.” 
 
 In Washington, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, who was testifying to a Senate committee on the fight against ISIS, said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families as the search and rescue continues.” 
 
 The Marine Corps said it was working “closely with all parties involved to locate our Marines and the Army aircrew as soon as possible.” 
 
 “Our thoughts and prayers are with the Marines, soldiers and family members of those involved in this mishap,” the corps said in a statement. 
 
 The downed helicopter departed from Destin, Florida. Eglin Air Force Base is in Valparaiso, Florida, about 45 miles east of Pensacola. 
 
 Emmanuelle Saliba of NBC News contributed to this report.
– A Navy helicopter went down this morning about 18 miles off the coast of Virginia Beach, reports the Virginian-Pilot. The Navy confirms that the chopper, a Sea Dragon, was one of two on a training mission and had to make an emergency landing in the water. Four of the five crew members were rescued, but two died later at the hospital. Another is in serious condition. The last member of the crew still has not been found, and the Navy and Coast Guard planned to search through the night. Sea Dragons are used mainly in heavy-lifting operations and in clearing mines from shipping lanes, notes the Pilot; the Navy has only 29 left, as they had been scheduled to be eliminated in the mid-2000s. Meanwhile, NBC reports that yesterday's helicopter crash in England, which killed four US servicemen, spread hazardous debris across "difficult terrain" in an area the size of a soccer field.