Marines Plan Quick Repair of Grounded Copters

The Marine Corps hopes to make quick repairs on its grounded Super Stallion helicopters and have at least some of them flying again by next week, a military source said Tuesday.

Flights of accident-plagued CH-53E Super Stallions, the Marine Corps’ biggest and most expensive helicopter, were suspended by Pentagon order Saturday after engineers discovered a flaw in the gearbox on the No. 2 engine from one of the helicopters. The gearbox was being overhauled at the Stratford, Conn., plant of Sikorsky Aircraft, the copter’s manufacturer.

About 45 of the worldwide fleet of 93 helicopters are based at the Marine Corps Air Station at Tustin.

A Navy source, who asked not to be identified, told The Times that the Marines plan to replace suspect gearboxes with unflawed ones that the military has in its inventory. The official added that each conversion could take as little as 10 hours. The work is scheduled to begin Friday at Tustin. The Marines use the Super Stallion as a troop-carrying, heavy-lift helicopter. The Navy uses the same model, known as a MH-53E, to sweep over the water to detect mines.

Although the Super Stallion has one of the worst safety records of any helicopter used by the Navy and Marines, military officials said the gearbox problem that grounded the giant copters was not a cause in six previous fatal accidents that killed 24 Marines. Seventeen Marines have been injured in mishaps involving the aircraft, which can cost up to $24 million.

A spokesman for Sikorsky, a subsidiary of United Technologies, also said that none of the fatal accidents have been linked to the flawed gear. Describing the grounding of the Super Stallions as a precautionary measure, spokesman Fred Lash said the flaw appeared to be in the “bull gear,” a part that links the engine to the shaft that turns the main rotor and its blades.

According to the Navy source, the CH-53Es will be put into service as the gearboxes are replaced. Gearboxes that are removed, inspected and found to be safe will be placed immediately on other Super Stallions.

“Hopefully one-third of the (total) helicopter force could be ready to fly in two weeks,” the source said.

The latest grounding of the CH-53E resulted from an investigation of a malfunctioning gearbox that forced a Super Stallion to make an emergency landing last October in a vacant field in Irvine, Lt. Col Jerry Shelton of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station said Saturday when he announced that flights of the helicopter were being suspended.

Shelton did not return calls to his office Tuesday.

Saturday’s grounding of the helicopter was not the first. In late 1984, the fleet of CH-53Es was grounded 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.

In the most recent Super Stallion accident, five Tustin Marines were killed Jan. 8 when a CH-53E crashed at the Salton Sea Test Range in Imperial County. The craft was on a rountine training mission when it crashed and burned in the desert. Military officials are investigating the accident.