U.S. Rescuers Delayed in Ron Brown Crash

A U.S. military search-and-rescue operation with lifesaving equipment was not launched to find the wreckage of Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown’s plane until four hours after the aircraft was reported missing, the U.S. commander in charge of the operation said Saturday.

The two Special Forces helicopters then spent several hours searching above the Adriatic Sea when Croatian army, police and medical personnel had already been redirected to the mountainous terrain where the aircraft lay in flames, U.S. Army Gen. Michael Canavan said.

Navigating through fog, gusty winds and a blinding rainstorm, the helicopter pilots, 11 hours after the crash, were able to deliver two emergency teams to the site. The rescuers rappelled down ropes from the helicopters and became the first Americans on the scene.

Canavan, who commands U.S. Army Special Forces at Brindisi, Italy, spoke to reporters following the departure for the United States of the bodies of Brown and the 32 other American victims of the crash. It was his first public account of the operation he directed.

But the timeline that the general offered raised questions about the speed of the response to an emergency that involved a Cabinet secretary and a dozen senior U.S. businessmen, as well as a large contingent of U.S. government officials. Two Croats and a New York Times reporter also perished, as did the Air Force crew piloting Brown’s flight.

A swifter response probably would not have saved many lives. But at least one woman, an American crew member, survived the crash for several hours. Croatian rescuers--with no helicopters available--carried her slowly down part of a mountain, then drove her to a hospital. She died about eight hours after the crash.

Reporters were given an aerial view of the plane’s wreckage Saturday. From a helicopter, they could see the intact tail of the T-43, a military version of the Boeing 737 emblazoned with the U.S. flag, perched on one side of the hill. Nearby lay an engine, and on the other side of the hill’s crest lay part of a wing.

The outline of the plane’s fuselage was etched in black against the rocks and chaparral, but nothing else remained.

With the exception of the tail, holding about five or six rows of seats, the entire plane appeared to have burned or disintegrated. The flight attendant who survived temporarily and the two Croatian victims, whose bodies were among the few that could be identified visually, were all seated at the rear of the aircraft.

Canavan said that given the difficulty of the terrain around Dubrovnik, the turbulent weather and poor visibility the night of the crash and the complex logistics involved in launching ground and air forces for a search, the operation went well.

“Putting that together, it was a very quick response,” he said.

The rescue helicopters “were here at 1930 [7:30 p.m. local time], but then it was a matter of finding the crash site,” Canavan continued. “Once it was found, we were able to go right to it with the aircraft.”

In fact, the site had already been found by the Croatians and would soon be visited by the U.S. ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, who had been at the Dubrovnik airport awaiting Brown’s flight.

Canavan said he learned of the location when he reached Dubrovnik at 11 p.m. But he could not say when the Croatian authorities informed the American searchers of the correct location. Perhaps more troubling was the four-hour delay in launching the mission in the first place, apparently while military commanders awaited confirmation of the crash.

Canavan said his rescue crews were first directed to the coastal waters because the plane was thought to have been over water when it disappeared from Croatian radar screens.

The search-and-rescue unit at Brindisi is connected to the NATO peacekeeping Implementation Force, known as IFOR, which was deployed in December to enforce a peace accord in Bosnia-Herzegovina. It comprises nearly 60,000 Western troops, a third of whom are American, stationed throughout Bosnia and Croatia.

Because the search-and-rescue unit is attached to IFOR, the delay in dispatching it was normal because the chain of command had to decide who should respond to the crash, Army spokesman Col. Mark Brzozowski said.

“This is not a fire department that you call up and . . . that [is] standing by to be a rescue force,” Brzozowski said.

Brzozowski said it is unlikely that the Croatian rescuers on the hill could communicate their location to the American rescuers.

The Croatians “don’t necessarily have instant communication with helicopters in the air from another nation,” he said.

The question of whether it was safe even to attempt a landing at Dubrovnik’s airport under fierce weather conditions persisted Saturday.

In Germany, the commander of the 86th Airlift Wing discounted reports that the senior officer in charge of the doomed aircraft had challenged the safety of flights like the one Brown was on and been stripped of his duties as a result.

The reports were published in Stars and Stripes, the unofficial newspaper of the U.S. military.

The squadron commander, Lt. Col. James Albright, was removed just five days before the Dubrovnik crash.

In a telephone interview, Brig. Gen. William E. Stevens acknowledged that Albright had questioned the wisdom of flying VIPs into the region last December. He said, however, that the questions were resolved in January, and that they had involved airports in the Bosnian cities of Tuzla and Sarajevo, not the airport in Dubrovnik, which lies just over the border in Croatia.

Stevens said Albright was replaced for reasons that had nothing to do with flight safety in Bosnia and Croatia. He blamed Albright for throwing a monkey wrench into delicate negotiations with the German government over whether the United States could prune back some fast-growing trees near the landing approach at Ramstein Air Force Base, and over the hours during which U.S. planes could land and take off in Germany.

Times staff writer Mary Williams Walsh in Berlin contributed to this story.

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Timeline of Rescue Operation

Here is a chronology of the search-and-rescue operation after the Dubrovnik crash. It is provided by Army Gen. Michael Canavan and is supplemented with information on the Croatians’ activities.

About 3 p.m. local time Wednesday--Radar tracking loses the aircraft.

5 p.m.--Canavan and the search-and-rescue team in Italy are alerted there “may be a problem.”

7 p.m.--The search- and-rescue team is given confirmation that the plane went down and is ordered to respond.

7:30 p.m.--Helicopters begin search off Dubrovnik coast. About the same time, Croatian rescuers approach hill location.

11 p.m.--Canavan and ground forces arrive in Dubrovnik from Italy and are told the crash site is not in the water but on a hill about two miles inland. They begin moving to the foot of the hill. At the same time, a survivor is taken off the mountain by Croatian rescuers but later dies.

2 a.m. Thursday--First Americans reach site.

About 6:30 a.m.--American ground search-and-recovery operation begins.