There is a moment that no one outside the Armed Forces ever sees. It is the morning when a twenty-two-year-old boy stands before the flag and takes the oath . He does not yet know whether he will be called to honor him over Karpathos or over a burning forest in Evia. He only knows that he gave his word and paid for it with his life. Thirty-seven people in uniform have honored their love for their homeland for the past twenty years.
The last two have had names since Saturday. First Lieutenant (I) Ioannis Blesias, 40 years old , and First Lieutenant (I) Dimitrios Petrou, 37 years old , crashed in Tanagra with the F4E Phantom II of the 338th Squadron , in front of hundreds of people who had come to applaud. They were fighting an aircraft that was losing altitude, knowing that there was a crowd below them. They did not have time to abandon it. This is the last thing they did in their lives and nothing more needs to be said about them. They saved people because the victims would have been many…
Behind them stretches a twenty-year history that the country has never read in its entirety. Nineteen Air Force pilots in thirteen accidents. The list opens on April 14, 2006 with Captain (I) Pantelis Gelis, 33 years old , who had taken off from Tanagra with a Mirage 2000EG and was found with a malfunction in the autopilot over Mount Ptoo. The Air Force announced that he did not use the ejection seat. He fought until the last moment to save the plane. He was married, with two children. Five weeks later, on May 23, 2006, Captain (I) Konstantinos Iliakis, 36 years old , did not return from an interception southeast of Karpathos. It’s the name that everyone remembers, because it fits the image we have of how a Greek pilot disappears.
But the truth is harsher and more humbling. Only two of the thirteen accidents occurred in interceptions. All the rest occurred in missions that society itself asks of aviators in peacetime.
In Stira, Evia, in July 2007, a CL415 flew low to keep the fire away from the houses of the settlement of Dilisos. It made the dive, lost support and crashed into the ground. Inside were Captain (I) Dimitrios Stoilidis, 34 years old , father of twin boys, and Lieutenant (I) Ioannis Hatzoudis, 27 years old . They flew low because there were houses down there belonging to people they didn’t even know. In December of the same year, in the middle of the night, at the Psathoura firing range, Captain (I) Athanasios Batsaras, 35 years old , was lost with an F16 Block 52+ of the 337 Squadron. His son was born four months after his funeral.
In August 2009 , Lieutenant Colonel (I) Stergios Kotoulas, 55 years old , flew a PZL M18 Dromader over Katelios, Kefalonia. Fifty-five years old, with four thousand hours of flight time behind him, with two children at home, he had nothing to prove to anyone. He went low and did not return. In August 2010, west of the island of Chrysi, two F16s collided during training. Lieutenant Colonel (I) Anastasios Balatsoukas was killed instantly. Lieutenant Colonel (I) Iosif Anastasakis, 34 years old , fought for three days in the hospital in Heraklion before leaving.
On January 26, 2015, tragedy struck our people far from home. The two-seater F16D Block 50 of the 341 Squadron crashed during takeoff at Los Llanos base in Albacete, during NATO training. Captain (I) Panagiotis Laskaris, 35 years old , and Captain (I) Athanasios Zagkas, 31 years old , were lost, along with nine French airmen . Zagkas left behind a newborn baby. In April 2018 , Captain (I) Georgios Baltadoros, 34 years old , was returning from an interception with a Mirage 2000 version 5 when it crashed into the sea northeast of Skyros. He had two young children. In August, north of Sparta, Flight Lieutenant (I) Nikolaos Vasiliou stayed at the controls of the T2 Buckeye long enough for his student to open his parachute. The co-pilot survived. The instructor did not.
2023 was the darkest year. In January, twenty-five miles south of Andravida, the F4E Phantom II of 338 Squadron took with it Captain (I) Efstathios Tsitlakidis, 31 years old , and Second Lieutenant (I) Marios Michael Touroutsikas, 29 years old . In July, at Platanistos Karystos, the CL215 of 355 Squadron fell immediately after being thrown over the flames. Captain (I) Christos Moulas, 34 years old , from Crete, and Second Lieutenant (I) Periklis Stefanidis, 27 years old , from Thessaloniki, were extinguished in front of cameras across the country. And on the day of the holidays, on December 27, half a mile from Kalamata airport, First Lieutenant (I) Epaminondas Kosteas, 40 years old , fell while his wife and children watched his flight from below.
The same oath binds the other two branches. The Army Air Force mourned fifteen people. Four officers in Kariotissa, Pelli, in February 2006, on a night flight with binoculars. Three more in Vasiloudi, Thessaloniki, in March 2008. The two pilots of the AH64A Apache who were found charred fifteen hours after the crash in Kymi in November 2008, and whose initials were only publicly given. Major Andreas Dermaris and Lieutenant Konstantinos Giocas , when the AH64DHA lost a wing in flight in Pachi, Megaron in July 2010. All four of Sarantaporos, on April 19, 2017, when the UH1H crashed on a difficult slope in Elassona. Major General Ioannis Tzanidakis , Colonel Thomas Adamou , the captain Major Demosthenes Goulas and the co-captain Lieutenant Konstantinos Hatzis, 28 years old . Only Lieutenant Vasiliki Plexida emerged alive from the wreckage.
The Hellenic Navy Aviation counts three. In the early hours of February 11, 2016, during a low-flying night exercise, the Agusta Bell AB212 crashed into the steep slope of Kinaros. Lieutenant Commander Anastasios Toulitsis, 37 years old , Lieutenant Commander Konstantinos Pananas, 34 years old , and Lieutenant Commander Eleftherios Evangelou, 36 years old , were left on an uninhabited island in the Aegean Sea, where no one ever goes.
Thirty-seven names. From twenty-seven to fifty-five. Most with wives, children, a house waiting for them at night. They did not fall in war. They fell in training, in transportation, in evaluation, in firefighting, in an air show on a summer afternoon. They fell doing the job assigned to them by their homeland on days when nothing happens, on days when the rest of us don’t even think about someone flying above us. The oath to the flag has no peace clause. And the price, as this list shows, is paid equally heavily in the Aegean sky and in the sky above our own forests.
