Imia: The Helmet of Panagiotis Vlachakos Found 23 Years Later

Thirty years have passed since the Imia crisis, when Greece and Turkey came perilously close to armed conflict. During the crisis, a Greek helicopter carrying Lieutenant Commander Christodoulos Karathanasis, Commander Panagiotis Vlachakos, and Chief Petty Officer Hektor Giolpso crashed, claiming all three lives. Tensions peaked on January 31, 1996, when Turkish special forces landed on one of the two islets—pushing both nations to the brink of war. In 2018—23 years after the tragedy—a Greek fisherman from Kalymnos recovered Vlachakos’s helmet from the sea and handed it over to his family. Months after the crash, Vlachakos’s father was summoned to the Ministry of National Defence, where officials attempted to present him with an undamaged, generic helmet falsely claimed to belong to his son. On January 30, 2026, Alpha TV publicly shared a photo of the authentic helmet. Vlachakos’s brother, speaking on Open TV, confirmed its recovery: ‘After many years, a fisherman from Kalymnos retrieved my brother’s helmet—I received it six years ago. It took 23 full years to hold his real helmet.’ He emphasized: ‘My brother’s helmet was red—visible in many photos—with his name and blood type inscribed. That’s the one I now keep at home—the genuine one—not the substitute they tried to give our father back then.’