203rd RED HORSE ceremony remembers Airmen killed 15 years ago - March 3, 2016

Family members, friends and Airmen assigned to the Virginia Air National Guard’s Virginia Beach-based 203rd RED HORSE Squadron conduct a memorial service March 3, 2016, at Camp Pendleton to remember 18 unit members and three Florida Army Guard aviators killed 15 years ago. The 203rd engineers and the Florida aviators from Detachment 1, 171st Aviation Battalion, were killed March 3, 2001, when the C-23 Sherpa they were flying in crashed in a cotton field near Unadilla, Georgia. The 203rd members were returning home after completing a two-week military construction project at Hurlburt Field, Florida. The C-23 crash was the worst peacetime aviation disaster in the history of the National Guard, and the worst loss of life in the Virginia National Guard since World War II.