Military Orders Grounding of All CH-53E Copters

The Marine Corps and the Navy suspended all flights of their accident-plagued, heavy-lift CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter Saturday until inspectors can look at the main gearbox assembly on one of the aircraft’s three big jet engines.

In a terse announcement, the military said the fleet of more than 90 CH-53E helicopters stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station at Tustin and other bases around the world had been grounded. Military officials said they did not know how long it would take to conduct the gearbox inspections but added that the procedures would not begin in Tustin, where about half of the CH-53Es are based, until the middle of this week.

The Super Stallion, the largest helicopter made outside the Soviet Union, is capable of carrying 55 combat-equipped troops or lifting 16 tons in equipment. The helicopters can cost up to $24 million each.

But the three-engine aircraft have been plagued by problems since first being delivered to the Marines and Navy in 1980 by Sikorsky Aircraft of Stratford, Conn. The Super Stallion has been involved in six fatal crashes that killed 24 Marines; 17 Marines have been injured in mishaps involving the Super Stallion.

Four of the crashes involved Marines based at Tustin, where about 45 Super Stallions are based in two heavy helicopter squadrons.

The latest fatal crash involving a Super Stallion was Jan. 8 near the Salton Sea Test Range in Imperial County. All five crew members aboard a Tustin-based copter perished when it fell into the desert during nighttime landings for troop deployment. Although the military declined to speculate the cause of the crash, a deputy Imperial County coroner at the scene said it appeared the big helicopter dropped straight down.

A Marine spokesman said Saturday that the gearbox inspections were unrelated to any of the fatal crashes of the Super Stallion.

This is not the first general grounding of Super Stallions. The fleet of CH-53E helicopters was grounded in late 1984 following a crash of a Super Stallion in Camp Lejeune, N.C. that killed six Marines and injured 11 others. The aircraft remained grounded until military mechanics and Sikorsky officials inspected the tail rotors, a section thought to be at fault in the Camp Lejeune accident.

The grounding notice for the CH-53E came two days after a different model troop-carrier helicopter, based at El Toro Marine Air Corps station, crashed into Orange County foothills east of Irvine, killing its three crew members. That crash, Marine officials said, had nothing to do with the grounding of the CH-53E. The copter that crashed in fog Thursday night was a CH-46E Sea Knight made by the Boeing Vertol Co.

A Marine spokesman said the suspension of Super Stallion operations resulted from what mechanics found when they inspected a CH-53E that made a forced landing on Oct. 21, 1986, in a vacant Irvine strawberry field within sight of the mammoth hangers at the Tustin base.

On Jan. 22, two weeks after the Salton Sea crash, a CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter, a two-engine model and one that is less powerful than the CH-53E, crashed in the desert near Yuma, Ariz., while on maneuvers. Four Marines were slightly injured.