The Marine Corps KC-130 refueling tanker went down 200 miles off the coast of Japan Dec. 6 after colliding with an F/A-18 fighter jet during routine training.
All five crewmembers of the modified C-130 — essentially a flying gas station — went down with the plane. They were declared dead after a five-day search by U.S., Japanese, American, and Australian aircraft and ships covering more than 35,000 square nautical miles failed to locate the wreckage.
The pilots of the F/A-18 ejected and were plucked from the ocean, but one didn’t survive after spending 10 hours in the water.
Following an agonizing wait to hear if there had been any survivors from the tanker, the families and friends of the fallen Marines now face a longer wait to learn if the plane is found and the remains of their loved ones recovered.
It could be months or even longer before they know.
During the mid-air collision, the F/A-18’s wingman was able to report the approximate location of downed pilots. There will also be radar data and perhaps even floating wreckage.
“We take all of that. We look at the currents. We look at the radar or other aircraft reports that came in and then, we begin from there, because if you don’t have a good starting point — it’s a big ocean,” said Michael Dean, deputy supervisor of salvage and diving for the Navy.
The hardest part is finding the plane in the first place. The emergency locator beacon has a battery life of about 30 days, so it’s a race against time.
In the case of the C-2, the carrier’s helicopters saw where it went down.
Once the plane is located, a decision will be make whether to recover the entire aircraft, or just the parts relevant to the investigation, such as a cockpit data and voice recorders, or “black boxes,” so there is a good possibility the families of the fallen will have to accept their loved ones will have a final resting spot at sea.
It’s questionable whether remains would still be in the aircraft after many months, but the primary purpose of going to the time and expense of hauling a plane up from the ocean depths is to find out what went wrong, so it doesn’t happen again.
“It’s entirely up to the aircraft accident investigation board as to whether they want the aircraft back,” Dean said. “Generally, the only reason for recovering the aircraft is it the investigation board needs to recover data to help understand the cause of the accident … the sole purpose is to prevent another accident.”
The Navy’s salvage experts can recover pretty much anything down to a depth of 20,000 feet — far deeper than humans can go — but the rigging of an airframe so it can be hoisted to the surface is done by “manipulators” on a remotely-operated vehicle.
When a U.S. Navy C-2 Greyhound transport plane crashed last year on a flight to the USS Ronald Reagan last year, it took the Navy a month to locate the plane, which was found in two pieces at the bottom of the Philippine Sea.
The plane suffered an engine problem en route to the aircraft carrier, and the pilot made a water landing, which was credited with saving the lives of eight of the 11 people on board. They were plucked from the sea by Navy helicopters from the nearby carrier, but the heroic pilot, Lt. Steven Combs, was among three crew members who didn’t survive.
The COD flight, short for Carrior Onboard Delivery, crashed Nov. 22, 2017 and was located the following month on Dec. 29 by a Navy salvage crew using a towed passive sonar system to listen for the plane’s emergency locator pinger.
But a year later, the Navy has been unable to raise the wreckage from more that 18,000 feet of water. The deep water and treacherous seas have delayed the recovery for a least several more months.
“Now that we’re in typhoon season in that part of the world, we’re going to have to wait for the seas to abate, Rear Adm. Scott Conn told the House Armed Services Committee in September. “Our best estimate right now is — when we look at the conditions that the ocean will provide — we’re looking late spring, early summer of next year.”
If the plane is found, and a recovery attempted, the families will be notified, a Marine spokesman said.
“The Marine Corps is focused on taking care of our Marines and their families,” said a statement issued when the dead were identified. “One way we ensure families receive everything they need is to keep them personally updated in the aftermath of incidents.”
On Friday, one week after the accident, a single KC-130J flew over Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni during memorial services in Japan for the five Marines who died, while their families looked on.
The crew has been identified as Lt. Col. Kevin Herrmann, 38, Maj. James Brophy, 36, Staff Sgt. Maximo Flores, 27, Cpl. Daniel Baker, 21, and Cpl. William Ross, 21.
