Navy Ends Search for Wreckage of Marine Helicopter
The Navy has halted efforts to find more debris from a Marine Corps helicopter that crashed Thursday, killing seven of 18 aboard, and has not decided whether to attempt to retrieve the helicopter from the ocean bottom, a Marine Corps spokesman said Monday.
The bodies of six Marines and a Navy medical corpsman are thought to remain in the wreckage of the CH-46 Sea Knight that crashed 14 miles off Point Loma while on a routine training exercise.
A military aviation mishap panel will decide whether to seek to retrieve the helicopter from 3,600 feet of water. Among the criteria in making a decision are whether retrieval is possible and whether the wreckage is necessary to determine the cause of the crash.
The Sea Knight spun out of control and crashed into the sea after its left landing gear became entangled in a safety net on the oiler Pecos.
A San Diego-based deep submergence vehicle has been used to retrieve other military aircraft. The crash of the Sea Knight was caught on videotape by two Marine Corps combat cameramen. Both pilots survived, which should assist investigators in determining the crash’s cause.
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