Relatives of Marines Who Died in Crashes React With Anger

Relatives of Marines who have died in crashes of the accident-plagued Super Stallion helicopter responded with a mixture of anger and relief to a call Friday by Rep. Robert E. Badham for the grounding of the entire fleet.

The Newport Beach Republican urged the Navy to pull all Super Stallions out of service until an apparent design flaw is corrected. Badham said the Navy has known about the flaw for years.

“The first thing we said is, ‘Thank God,’ ” said Miriam Reilly of Taunton, Mass., whose son, Michael, died in January when the Marine helicopter he was co-piloting unexpectedly slammed to the desert floor in a fiery crash near the Salton Sea.

“The Super Stallion-53 should have been grounded a hell of a lot sooner,” she said, her voice choking with anger. “It’s too late for our son and the four other special young men that went with him, but we thank God that other parents and families will not have to go through what we have for such a senseless, needless tragedy.”

Reached at his Toronto, Ohio, home, Glen Burris, whose 21-year-old son, Mark, perished with Reilly and three others in the most recent Super Stallion crash, said: “I’m pointing my finger at the Navy. When these things started to happen, this is when problems with the Super Stallion should have been taken care of--not after (all those) Marines were killed. It should have been a safe piece of machinery before it was ever put into the air.”

Burris said his days have been difficult since his son was killed, his life “one-tenth of what it should be.

“You take a child, you raise it all its life, then they go off to service. In an instant they’re dead from somebody’s mistake. A mistake that they have known for years. And somebody just didn’t do anything about it. I think the one that knew about it . . . something ought to be done.

“I hope he (Badham) does get them all shut down. I know a lot of other Marines that fly, and I would like for them to be safe.”

Badham is a member of the House Armed Services Committee, which is investigating the string of Super Stallion crashes. He said at a press conference Friday that congressional investigators had uncovered internal Navy memos revealing that the helicopter’s manufacturer, Sikorsky Aircraft Co., disclosed a design problem with the powerful helicopters more than 10 years. But he said the Navy authorized their use anyway.

Badham said the design flaw led to “overstress” of critical moving parts and a twisting of the helicopter’s tail section. The Super Stallion, he said, has been involved in at least 39 accidents and emergency landings and is responsible for at least 20 deaths.

Lori Utsinger, the young widow of John Utsinger, who died in a June, 1984, Super Stallion crash near San Clemente Island, said she learned of Badham’s remarks through a tearful call from her mother-in-law, Kathy Ford of Tustin. She said the revelations were of little comfort to her now.

“I wish they would have found this out about three years ago,” Utsinger, 25, said in a telephone interview from her home in Creston, Iowa. “It would have helped me out an awful lot. I’ve got two little kids with no dad around.

“I’ve always blamed it on the military and Sikorsky. Had they done something about it sooner, there’d still be a lot of guys around.”

Utsinger’s attorney, Mark Robinson Jr., of Santa Ana, said he was not surprised by Badham’s remarks, only that it took so long for the information to come out. “It’s about time,” Robinson said, adding that he personally told Badham about the helicopter’s structural flaw more than a year ago. “It’s like pulling teeth to get these people to come your way. These defects are nothing new.”

Robinson said the military instinctively tends to protect its contractors.

Michael B. Moore, an attorney who represents the family of crash victim Delbert Boyle, agreed that these kinds of tragedies are inevitable when the government is too close to the corporations that supply them with equipment. Boyle was killed in 1983 off the coast of Virginia when his CH-53D Sea Stallion helicopter crashed into the water and sank.

“Challenger Syndrome”

“It will be uncovered that this is what I would call the Challenger syndrome--the close inner weaving and working of the military and the government contractors that supply these goods,” Moore said, referring to the 1986 space shuttle disaster. “I would bet you dollars to doughnuts that the Navy had a lot of input from the manufacturer--reassuring them and attempting to prevent a rejection of the product by the Navy . . . or a request that the cost of the product be subsequently decreased.

“People in the service have to be put on notice that this kind of thing can’t continue. It’s just chilling to think of the people who go out and risk their lives day in and day out on some of these training missions and use this equipment.”

Orange County officials also expressed mixed emotions about Badham’s announcement.

“On the one hand,” said Irvine Mayor Larry Agran, “it is encouraging that we are a step closer to getting to the bottom of this tragic affair. On the other hand, it’s terribly distressing that information that apparently could have saved the lives of innocent pilots and crew and that could have spared the grief of so many, was withheld for so many years.

“Speaking as a local elected official,” Agran added, “it makes me shudder to think of the needless risks to innocent civilians that were also taken as a consequence of what was either negligence or an outright cover-up.”

Agran was referring to an incident last October, when a Tustin-based Super Stallion helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in an Irvine strawberry field, not far from a residential area. The helicopter was returning to base when it developed transmission problems. No one died or was injured in that episode.

Navy is accused of ignoring flaws in copter. Part I, Page 1.