"As far as I know they walked on and off the helo," Rear Admiral Matthew Moffit said, referring to the search and rescue helicopter which retrieved the two unidentified flyers early Wednesday.

Captain Patrick Driscoll, commander of the Kitty Hawk's air wing, said the pilot and his radar intercept officer received only minor injuries likely associated with their ejection from the plane and then their landing on the hard desert.

"It's pretty hard terrain and...the radar intercept officer might have hurt his ankle a little bit but they're both ambulatory and should be back here pretty soon," Driscoll told reporters at a joint news conference with Moffit, who commands the Kitty Hawk battle group.

Moffit could not say how long the airmen were on the ground but they were "picked up fairly rapidly" by the rescue crew.

The airmen were examined at Al Jaber Air Base in Kuwait and were expected to return to Kitty Hawk later Wednesday, said Moffit.

Although the flyers belong to Fighter Squadron 154 known as the Black Knights and based on this carrier in the Gulf, they had begun their "standard" mission from an airbase on land, he said.

Tomcats from the Kitty Hawk have been conducting regular bombing of targets in Iraq since a US and British assault began almost two weeks ago.

The aircraft had apparently dropped some bombs and still had others aboard when it crashed in an unspecified area of Iraq, the two senior officers said.

There was no hostile fire in the area where the airmen went down after a mechanical problem aboard their plane, Moffit said.

"One thing led to another causing the engines to fail," he said, adding there will be an investigation.

Moffit said there is no need at this point to ground the carrier's other Tomcats, which continued bombing missions over Iraq Wednesday.

He said the two airmen would definitely fly again.

Their tight-lipped colleagues also vowed Wednesday morning to continue their missions despite the incident.

The Tomcat is a twin-engine supersonic fighter which entered the navy's fleet in 1973 but has been modified and enhanced since then. The Tomcats are due to be replaced by F/A-18 Super Hornets.

Tuesday night's crash is believed to be the first acknowledged crash of a US fighter over Iraq during the nearly two-week long war.

It came as aircraft from the carrier continued to intensify their bombing of Iraq, doubling the number of bombs dropped over the previous five days. A public affairs officer said Tomcats and F/A-18 Hornets dropped 103 bombs on various targets during the day Tuesday and into Wednesday morning.

Earlier Tuesday a Marine Corps Harrier jet and a Navy S-3B Viking airborne refuelling tanker ditched in the Gulf during separate incidents. None of the pilots was seriously hurt, the Navy said.

Moffit said three accidents in one day is not unusual.

"No it's not. There's a theme in naval aviation and I think in military aviation in general that these accidents come in threes," he said. "It's one of those strange things that happens."

He said that, statistically, it is more likely that aircraft will be lost to mechanical problems than to combat.

SPACE.WIRE