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Few answers in year-old fatal Seahawk crash

SAN DIEGO — With a full load of fuel and boxed lunches tucked aboard their MH-60S Seahawk helicopter, the four-member aircrew went airborne and settled in for their plane guard mission for search and rescue during an afternoon of flight operations.

Their Jan. 26, 2007, mission started at 1:42 p.m., when they lifted from the deck of amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard during a pre-deployment at-sea training period with Expeditionary Strike Group 3. At 2:14 p.m., flying a route at 1,000 feet, lead pilot Lt. Andrew A. Dyer reported to the ship’s air boss that operations were “normal” as Marine Corps helicopters took to the air for a planned boarding mission.

Just nine minutes later, the radio screeched with the helicopter’s Electronic Locator Transmitter alarm and, almost immediately, came the harrowing call: “Mayday, mayday, mayday.”

The Seahawk, known as “Bullet 10” for this mission, was falling out of the sky, slamming tail-down into the Pacific, 16 miles off San Clemente Island. The four-member aircrew was killed.

The helicopter, assigned to Detachment 3 of Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 23, dropped into the sea and quickly sank. The crew of “Bullet 11,” another MH-60S flying nearby, pulled an unresponsive Aviation Warfare Systems Operator 2nd Class Christopher M. Will, 29, from the ocean. But Dyer, 26, along with his co-pilot, Lt. j.g. Laura J. Mankey, 26, and AW1 Cory J. Helman, 27, remained in the helicopter, which settled 3,700 feet below the surface.

In a delicate operation, salvage crews, using deep-diving remotely operated vehicles, recovered their bodies three weeks later and, eventually, nearly 90 percent of the helicopter. Navy officials convened an aviation mishap board, and investigators began a probe under the guidelines of the Judge Advocate’s General Manual.

But after more than nine months of investigation, aviation officials and mishap investigators are at a loss in determining what caused the MH-60S to drop 1,000 feet into the ocean.

“JAGMan investigators were unable to conclusively determine a specific cause for the mishap, unable to find fault, finding no culpability, no sign of neglect on the part of the aircrew nor the personnel responsible for maintaining the aircraft,” they wrote in their Aug. 16 investigation submitted to Expeditionary Strike Group 3. Navy Times received a redacted copy of the report Jan. 9 through a Freedom of Information Act request.

“There is no evidence suggesting that the drive-train or flight control components failed in flight,” the investigators wrote. “The crew’s experience and skill were adequate to combat in-flight emergencies related to a flight control failure.”

The lack of a clear cause of the crash is unusual because investigators didn’t even have any leading suspects. Investigators found no hydraulic or drive-train failure, no faulty engine, no flight control problems and no improper maintenance. The crew was rested, up-to-date in their flight qualifications and fully trained to handle in-flight emergencies, and there was no negligence or misconduct by the crew, they noted.

“Although the crew was conducting in-flight training during or shortly before the mishap, the activation of the ELT before the ‘mayday’ call leads the investigators to believe that an event occurred, which was sufficient enough to activate an ELT,” the report says.

According to the report, the lead investigator believed the pilot may have been preparing to deal with “a possible loss of tail rotor drive or procedures for an emergency landing [ditching] of the aircraft.” But two other officers subsequently reviewing the investigation report weren’t convinced that the investigation concluded that the aircrew was reacting to a possible loss of the tail rotor drive.

Seahawks lack data recorder

Investigators believe that they might have gotten some clues into the MH-60S crash if the aircraft was equipped with an onboard flight data recorder.

The crash has prompted Navy officials to buy and install the device in its H-60 fleet.

The helicopter’s advanced flight control computer, which includes a “nonvolatile memory,” or NVM, device, was recovered in the wreckage, but that device “was not programmed to record flight data,” investigators stated in the report.

“The lack of a flight data recorder on board the aircraft greatly hindered the search for a cause of the accident,” they wrote.

“Had the aircraft contained a flight data recorder or if the NVM contained the lines of code necessary for recording flight information, the aircraft’s maneuvers and the performance of the installed components would have provided a clear indication of what degradations may have occurred and what actions were taken during the last few minutes of flight,” they added. “A record would exist that could clearly identify any failed component in this case, aiding with determining what caused the ELT to sound and the subsequent loss of control severe enough for the pilot to call a Mayday.”

The lead investigator recommended that the Navy install flight data recorders on all its helicopters “to record the operating parameters, degradations and flight profiles of the aircraft and it’s [sic] flight related systems.”

A Navy commander who reviewed the investigation agreed with the JAGMan investigator and recommended the Navy buy crash-worthy encrypted flight data recorders for the H-60 helicopter.

“In this particular mishap, a recorder might have contained the missing evidence that could have provided more clarity into the cause(s) of this tragic mishap,” the officer, whose name was redacted in the released report, wrote, noting the “undetermined” root cause of the crash.

Vice Adm. Thomas Kilcline, who commands Naval Air Forces in Coronado, Calif., agreed and approved the recommendation.

Officials were making no comment about the investigation or recommendations, said Lt. Cmdr. Elizabeth Meydenbauer, Naval Air Forces spokeswoman.

A flight data recorder is part of an ongoing Navy initiative called Military Flight Operations Quality Assurance.

DISCUSS: The crash and follow-up investigation