Lieutenant Thomas Adams, 27, was one of seven military personnel killed when two Royal Navy Sea King helicopters collided in mid-air in the Gulf shortly before dawn on March 22.

Adams, of San Diego, California, was a former Kitty Hawk airman on an exchange program working as a radar operator with the Royal Navy's 849A Squadron.

"Tom seemed to revel in the happiness of others, and making friends to him was as natural as eating and drinking to the rest of us," his buddy, Lieutenant John Joseph, 28, told more than 130 mourners gathered in Kitty Hawk's hangar bay.

For three years until his transfer to the Royal Navy last October, Adams was a flight officer handling airborne communication and other duties with Kitty Hawk's E-2C Hawkeye command and control squadron, which calls itself the Liberty Bells.

Adams was mad about football (soccer) and one of the reasons he sought a deployment to Japan, where the Liberty Bells are based, was so he could watch last year's World Cup, Lieutenant Grant Koenig, another friend, said in an interview before the memorial.

With smiles on their faces, Koenig and Joseph described the blond-haired, stocky airman as a laid-back Californian whose love of travel, football and things English and European led him to the Royal Navy where he would have stayed for two and a half years.

"He was having a blast. He was getting along with everybody," said Koenig, who met Adams' Royal Navy colleagues at a memorial service held recently aboard HMS Ark Royal where Adams was deployed.

Joseph said the Liberty Bells' mechanics and other enlisted men looked up to Adams, who spoke German and Japanese, enjoyed reading history books, and had an interest in computers along with his love of football.

Joseph said Adams was happy when his Royal Navy squadron was sent to the Gulf earlier this year.

"He was really excited to fly with the British and get to see how they operate," said Joseph, whose Hawkeye made a ceremonial pass over the aircraft carrier Ark Royal during the earlier memorial.

"As we flew over the deck you could see everybody formed up and see the caskets," he said during the interview.

Adams had become a vital part of his Royal Navy squadron which call themselves the "Band of Brothers", Commander Tom Carroll of the Liberty Bells told mourners Thursday.

"And at Tom's death they treated him as one of their own," he said.

At the Kitty Hawk ceremony Adam's fellow airmen from the Liberty Bells lined up in their flight suits beside the squadron's adminstrators in khakis, and young maintenance men in navy blues. All wore baseball caps bearing the squadron's name.

Kitty's Hawk's senior officers, one member of the Royal Marines, and pilots from this carrier's other squadrons also attended.

Some represented an F/A-18 Hornet fighter-bomber squadron which lost a pilot during a mission over Iraq on April 2. The pilot, whose name has not been released, is listed as missing in action.

In honour of that pilot and other troops missing along with prisoners of war, a colour party of five sailors in formal white uniforms and white gloves carried a black flag alongside an American flag and another bearing Kitty Hawk's logo.

A young sailor tapped a small brass bell seven times, one for Adams and each of the other victims of the Royal Navy accident. Then seven sailors fired three volleys of rifle fire out toward the blue sea rushing past an open hangar bay door.

Joseph told reporters that accidents are "part of the risk that we live with everyday." They are as much a risk as being shot down during wartime, Koenig said.

But that doesn't make the loss of a friend any easier.

"It's still hard to believe that he's gone," Joseph said.

SPACE.WIRE