posted 08-29-2002 08:07 AM               

A Navy SEAL commander fell to his death while sliding down a rope from an Army Black Hawk helicopter during training exercises in southern El Salvador, the military said Wednesday.

Cmdr. Peter G. Oswald, head of the Navy's Puerto Rico-based Special Warfare Unit Four, was practicing a technique called fast-roping Tuesday outside Comalapa, a city 25 miles south of the capital, San Salvador, a spokesman for U.S. Southern Command in Miami said.

Oswald was the brother of former space shuttle astronaut Stephen Oswald, said Commander Kevin Aandahl, a spokesman for Navy Special Warfare Command Group Two in Virginia. Stephen Oswald piloted two missions of the space shuttle Discovery in 1992 and 1993, and commanded a mission aboard the Endeavour in 1995. He now heads Boeing's shuttle program.