Chinook yields five GIs’ bodies

ZAMBOANGA CITY — A salvage crew has recovered from 1,200-foot-deep waters the bodies of five of the 10 American soldiers whose MH-47E "Chinook" helicopter crashed off Negros Oriental in February, a US military spokesman said yesterday.

US army Maj. Cynthia Teramae, spokeswoman for the US Pacific Command Task Force 510, confirmed that the bodies of the five crewmen were recovered during ongoing salvage and recovery operations but declined to identify them.

She said the Americans’ remains will be processed by the US military at the Gen. Benito Ebuen Air Base in Mactan, Cebu before they are flown to the Charles C. Carson Center for Mortuary Affairs at Dover air force base in Delaware.

The recovery operations are being conducted by the US Naval Sea Systems Command which contracted a Dutch-owned offshore support vessel, the Jan Steen, and fitted it with a towed array sonar, used by US navy nuclear submarines.

The recovery team also used deep-sea drones, or unmanned vehicles with cameras and manipulator arms and claws, similar to the ones used to locate the Titanic in the northern Atlantic Ocean in the early 1990s.

Teramae said the recovery team will try to locate the two other missing Americans before lifting the Chinook, which crashed due to still unknown causes off Zamboanguita town near Apo island, last Feb. 22.

"The focus of the recovery effort is to determine the cause of the mishap," Teramae said. "We have recovered portions of the main wreckage."

The recovery brought to eight the total recovered bodies from the crash. Three bodies were recovered hours after the crash.

Before it crashed, the Chinook, carrying eight US army and two air force personnel, had just ferried US Special Forces and equipment to the Southern Command headquarters here for the joint RP-US "Balikatan" exercises.

The helicopter was on its way back to its temporary headquarters at the Gen. Benito Ebuen Air Base in Mactan, Cebu, some 150 nautical miles from Zamboanga, when it crashed.

The helicopter belonged to the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR) based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

Eight investigators have arrived from the US Army Safety Center in Fort Rucker, Alabama; the Air Force Special Operations Command in Hurlbert Field, Florida and the US bases in Seoul, South Korea.

Some 660 Americans are participating in the Balikatan exercises meant to advise and train Filipino troops in fighting Abu Sayyaf terrorists, who are holding hostage Filipino nurse Deborah Yap and American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham in Basilan.

Several Chinook are being used in the joint operations because the Philippine military has no night-flying aircraft, a major handicap in pinning down the rebels on Basilan island.

The military had said the Abu Sayyaf move stealthily through the island mostly at night, dragging along their hostages with them and evading the 5,000 Filipino troops hunting them.

Night flying and the use of infrared goggles are among the special skills that US Special Forces are passing on to their local counterparts in a bid to crush the Abu Sayyaf and free its hostages.

US military spokesmen said the Chinooks, reconfigured with advanced technology, are being used the US army SOAR.

With the use of certain types of equipment and night vision devices, the Chinook crew can operate in any environment in all types of terrain and at low altitudes.

US forces here said the Chinooks include a MH-47E type that can conduct "covert and overt infiltrations, exfiltrations, air assault, air supply and slight operations over a wide range of environmental conditions" as well as combat search and rescue missions.

Both the Philippine and US military are still at a loss on the cause of the crash, raising many speculations, including the possibility that the helicopter may have been shot down by communist rebels on Negros island.

The communists were also suspected of shooting at a C-130 US military cargo plane somewhere in Northern Luzon.

Local officials in Negros, however, have dismissed the speculation, saying that the helicopter crashed miles from land and beyond the range of small arms used by communist rebels. – With AFP