Trouble-Plagued Copter Crashes, 5 Marines Killed

A Marine Corps helicopter from Tustin slammed into the ground and burned near the Salton Sea Thursday night, killing all five crew members, officials said.

Marine Corps officials said the craft went down in open desert in the Salton Sea Test Range in Imperial County, seven miles south of Salton City, about 8:30 p.m. during practice nighttime landings for troop deployment.

The fiery crash is the latest in a series of accidents involving the CH-53E Super Stallion, which is the target of a congressional safety probe.

The three-engine helicopter, manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft Co. of Stratford, Conn., costs $16 million. It can carry as many as 55 combat soldiers, lift 16 tons of equipment and is sometimes used for naval minesweeping operations.

The Marine Corps declined Friday to speculate on the cause of the crash and said a team composed of squadron members from the Tustin Marine Corps Air Station will investigate.

But officials acknowledged that the latest accident is likely to prolong the controversy about the aircraft. “It is a program on which there have been a lot of reported problems,” Navy Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Mukri told the Associated Press.

In addition to transmission problems, the helicopters have experienced difficulties with tail rotor drive assemblies, Marine Corps officials said.

Sikorsky recently produced 56 of the helicopters for the military under a $742-million contract.

A company spokesman said Friday that the firm has “the greatest confidence” in the safety of the helicopter despite Thursday’s crash.

Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach), who initiated the congressional safety probe, said preliminary evidence points to pilot error in the latest crash.

“There’s no indication that there was anything that was wrong with the aircraft mechanically,” Badham said. “The bird just didn’t fall from the sky. It was entering the landing zone in night troop exercises and hit the ground too hard, flipped over and burned. The first reports we got from the Marine Corps indicated that there was no mechanical difficulty, and if it’s not mechanical, it’s got to be human. . . . That’s the presumption I would make at this time.”

Victims Identified

All members of the crew had been living in Orange County but had come from throughout the United States.

The Marine Corps identified the pilot as Maj. David J. Brandenburg, 34, of Mission Viejo and a native of Sacramento. The co-pilot was 1st Lt. Michael T. Reilly, 29, of Laguna Hills and a native of Taunton, Mass.

Also on board were Lance Cpls. Gregory L. Michaels, 19, of Tustin, a native of Frenchville, Pa., and Thomas H. Baddeley III, 21, of Tustin, a native of Yardley, Pa., and Cpl. Mark B. Burris, 21, of Tustin, whose hometown was Toronto, Ohio.

Since 1984, the Super Stallion helicopter has been involved in eight major crashes in which 24 Marines have been killed, 17 of them based at Tustin.

Before Thursday night’s crash, the most recent incident involved a Super Stallion that made a precautionary landing in an Irvine farm field Oct. 22 after encountering transmission problems.

Congressional Probe

Badham, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, asked for a congressional investigation shortly after four crew members died in a training flight crash at Twentynine Palms last May.

The congressional probe is complete except for the Marine Corps’ report on its findings in the cause of the Twentynine Palms crash, Badham said Friday.

“I’m somewhat certain that we will find that there is no inherent manufacturing or design flaw in the aircraft,” Badham said of the congressional investigation. “But we will also conclude that it’s a very complex aircraft. . . . It’s a lot of helicopter and it is unforgiving. . . . All of the training has to be very, very fine-tuned.” He said he was referring to the helicopter’s weight, size and speed.