Searchers scan Calif. seas for 3rd day after crash

[David]

AP


SAN DIEGO – Hope was fading but a search for survivors was set to continue into a third day Sunday for nine people who went missing when a U.S. Coast Guard plane collided with a Marine Corps helicopter over the Pacific Ocean.

Rear Adm. Joseph Castillo said at a news conference Saturday evening that there was still a chance of finding survivors among the seven military personnel aboard the Coast Guard C-130 and the two in the Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter because all had access to heat-retaining drysuits and were in excellent physical shape.

A Pentagon official said Friday that the crash likely killed all aboard. But Castillo said Saturday the search was ongoing, and Coast Guard officials were still classifying it as a rescue mission.

"We don't ever want to suspend the case prematurely, when there may be someone out there," Castillo said. "But hope gets less every day. My hope today is not what it was yesterday."

The two aircraft collided at 7:10 p.m. Thursday as the Coast Guard was searching for a missing boater. The Marine helicopter was flying in formation with another Cobra helicopter and two transports on a nighttime training exercise.

Families of the missing said they were grateful rescuers weren't giving up.

Jennifer Wiegandt Seidman said she holds out hope that her husband, Chief Petty Officer John Seidman, has managed to survive. Seidman is a flight engineer with a 23-year career in the Coast Guard.

"I don't want to let my mind go to thinking the worst," she said from the couple's home in Carmichael, Calif. "John knows what he's doing, and he's fit and he's very smart."

The Seidmans married in 2001 and Seidman, 43, is stepfather to her three children.

The search for the missing boater, David Jines, 50, was to be called off at day's end Saturday, Castillo said Saturday afternoon.

Nine aircraft searched over a 644-square-mile patch of ocean in waters about 2,000 feet deep. Debris from both aircraft was found, but there was no sign of the crew members.

"They're trained in survival tactics, they're trained also with the will to live," Castillo said. "We know they have the ability to survive longer than you might expect."

Castillo said the air crews would have had the dry suits, but it was unclear if they had them on when they crashed.

All seven aboard the Coast Guard plane are stationed at the Coast Guard Air Station in Sacramento, Calif.

The aircraft commander, Lt. Cmdr. Che Barnes, 35, is from Capay, Calif. His co-pilot, Lt. Adam Bryant, 28, is from Crewe, Va.

Bryant's mother, Nina Bryant, also of Crewe, said Saturday that all she had been told was that "they're searching and haven't found anyone yet, and they don't know whose fault it was."

"You never know. Miracles happen," she said.

The missing crew members from the Marine helicopter are Maj. Samuel Leigh, 35, of Belgrade, Maine, and 1st Lt. Thomas Claiborne, 26, of Parker, Colo.

Leigh's father, David, said his son, who was not married, was based in San Diego and was focused on a military career "since age 3." Leigh went to Norwich University, a military school in Vermont, and joined the Marines right after graduation in 1996.

"He wasn't mechanically inclined, so we were particularly proud of him, because he had to master an awful lot," said David Leigh, who lives in Belgrade.

The accident happened in airspace uncontrolled by the FAA and inside a so-called military warning area, which is at times open to civilian aircraft and at times closed for military use, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said. He did not know the status of the airspace at the time of the crash.

Minutes before the collision, the FAA told the C-130 pilot to begin communicating with military controllers at Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego Bay, but it was not known if the pilot did so, Gregor said.

On Saturday, a top Coast Guard official said he believed the C-130 pilot had spoken with the military controllers before the accident.

Accident investigators who began arriving in San Diego on Saturday would review communications between the pilots and between the pilots and the FAA and military controllers, said Capt. Tom Farris, commander of the Coast Guard's 11th District.

Investigators are also collecting witness statements from those aboard the three other Marine aircraft and will check to see if any distress calls were made.











This undated image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard shows from left: Lt. Cmdr. Che J Barnes, 35, from Capay, Calif., aircraft commander; Lt. Adam W. Bryant, 28, from Crewe, Va., co-pilot; and Chief Petty Officer John F. Seidman, 43, from Stockton, Ca., flight engineer. The C-130 and the Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter collided at 7:10 p.m. Thursday Oct. 29, 2009 as the Coast Guard was conducting a search operation for a missing boater.