9 bodies ID'd in Army helicopter crash, Guard says

NAVARRE BEACH, Fla. — The bodies of all but two servicemen have been recovered after an Army helicopter crash off the Florida Panhandle, military officials said Thursday.

Divers also have found the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that went down in heavy fog, but weather could continue to hamper recovery efforts. Four Guardsmen and seven Marines died after the helicopter crashed in a Tuesday training exercise.

The bodies of the two remaining Guardsmen are believed to be inside the aircraft, which was reported missing around 8:30 p.m. CT Tuesday as the area was under a fog advisory, Louisiana National Guard officials said in a press release. The nine other bodies have been identified and families of all 11 troops notified.

Divers found the helicopter in several pieces at the bottom of the Santa Rosa Sound 25 feet underwater at about 9 a.m. Wednesday as heavy fog continued to blanket the area, said Mark Giuliano, fire chief at nearby Eglin Air Force Base. He was commander of the rescue operation.

The aircraft hit the water at a high rate of speed, causing it to break apart, at a time of almost no visibility from the fog, he said. A second helicopter participating in the same training mission decided to turn around because of the weather and landed safely.

"The conditions out there were very, very dense," Giuliano said. "The boats that did get out there could not see" in the fog as they tried to recover crash victims.

Fog and intermittent rain are expected to continue in the area until Sunday, according to a National Weather Service forecast.

Officials at Eglin, about 50 miles east of Pensacola, have not released the names of the men. Yet grieving Marine and Guardsman families who were notified in the past day have been talking about their loved ones:

• Marine Marcus Bawol, 27, of Warren, Mich., "loved everything about the military," said his sister, Brandy Peek. He had planned to marry his fiancée, Erika Lynn Hipple, on Oct. 17. On Thursday, Warren Mayor Jim Fouts ordered flags in the city, just north of Detroit, flown at half staff.

• Marine Trevor Blaylock of Orion Township, Mich., had a wife and two daughters, according to WDIV-TV, Detroit.

• Marine Kerry Kemp of Port Washington, Wis., had a daughter just shy of her first birthday, said his sister-in-law, Lora Waraksa of Port Washington. He met his wife, Jenna Kemp, in high school and loved taking his nephews out to hunt for sea shells.

• Staff Sgt. Andrew Seif of Holland, Mich., was awarded the Silver Star, the Marine Corps third highest award for valor, March 6. Two Marines at his family's home Wednesday said Seif's status is unknown; officials at the high school from which he graduated said Thursday that their prayers go out to his family, according to the Holland (Mich.) Sentinel.

• Pilot David Strother of Pineville, La., a Guardsman who was one of two pilots on the helicopter, had served overseas tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, said Pastor Darryl Hoychick of Trinity Baptist Church in Pineville, a longtime family friend.

"My heart breaks," he said. "They're just excellent people, down-to-earth people, trustworthy people, the kind of people you want as neighbors."

Since late Tuesday, rescuers had been searching an almost 100-square-mile area of water between Santa Rosa Island and the mainland east of Navarre, Fla. The military has been using part of the barrier island for training since World War II.

"The entire military community mourns the loss of our friends that we consider family," said Maj. Gen. Glenn Curtis, adjutant general of the Louisiana National Guard. "We are heartbroken. We are shocked. But we are a team — standing together for the families and for each other."

On Wednesday, searchers frustrated by fog that kept airborne efforts grounded for hours discovered pieces of the helicopter that had washed ashore and also remains of some of the victims. On Thursday, Air Force Col. Monte Cannon, vice commander of the 96th Test Wing, said their efforts had transitioned from rescue to recovery.

The Coast Guard also suspended its search but remains as consultants to Army salvage operations.

"What they were doing was so important," Don Jeffries of Navarre said of the Marines and Guardsmen. "Even though it's a training exercise, it's still for the purpose of protecting us and advancing America, so their lives weren't lost in vain."

Although divers found the helicopter wreckage and retrieved some pieces of the aircraft Wednesday afternoon, not all of the fuselage has been recovered, Giuliano said. They had to halt operations in the evening when underwater visibility also decreased.

Poor weather stopped salvage operations by mid-afternoon Thursday but efforts were expected to continue Friday.

The helicopter's black box has not been brought to the surface yet, Giuliano said. When it is, it will be forwarded to personnel from the Army's Combat Readiness Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., who will take the lead in investigating the crash. A team of Army, Air Force, National Guard, Marine and Navy experts is expected to take months to determine its cause.

It is too early to speculate on why one aircraft landed safely while the other crashed, said Lt. Col. Peter Schneider of the Louisiana Air National Guard.

"That's one of the things they are determining in the investigation," he said. "They'll interview the crew and determine the facts of the case."

The troops who died and those in the second Black Hawk who survived were at Eglin on temporary assignment. The elite Marines from the Marine Corps Special Operations Command at Camp Lejeune, N.C., were practicing insertion and extraction techniques, using small boats and helicopters to get into and out of a target site, and the training in adverse weather conditions was not unusual, officials said.

The experienced Guardsmen from the Louisiana National Guard's 1-244th Assault Helicopter Battalion in Hammond, La., were the Black Hawk's pilots and crew. The unit had served two tours of duty overseas in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and also deployed to help during hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the BP oil spill, Mississippi River flooding and other domestic missions.

Their deaths may be the largest number of U.S. military air fatalities since the war in Afghanistan. On Aug. 6, 2011, 30 American troops and eight Afghans died after the Taliban shot down a CH-47 Chinook helicopter crash in Wardak province, west of Kabul.

"For this to happen is a shocker," said Gerald Klein of Hammond, also a Guardsman. "It's not like they were deployed overseas."

Contributing: Kaycee Lagarde, Pensacola (Fla.) News Journal; Christina Hall, Detroit Free Press; Jeff Matthews, The (Alexandria, La.) Town Talk; WWL-TV, New Orleans; The Associated Press