Sun Star Manila September 02, 2008
US Navy ship arrives to help locate C-130
THE US Navy ship John McDonnell has arrived in the Philippines early morning Monday to help Philippine authorities locate the wreckage of the C-130 plane that crashed into the Davao Gulf on August 25.
The US ship entered the Philippine waters around 2 a.m. and proceeded to the Davao Gulf to help in the search and retrieval operations. The US ship brought with it modern equipment like underwater cameras and recovery equipment.
The US Navy ship John MacDonnell was spotted by the Philippine Navy inside the Davao Gulf at about 10:00 in the morning.
"It was the naval attache of the US embassy that informed me that they will be arriving this morning," Capt. Rosauro Gonzales, chief of TF C-130, said upon embarking from a Philippine Navy ship where he attempted to contact the US Navy ship.
Gonzales added that the USNS John MacDonnell immediately embarked on sweeping the sea floor of the Davao Gulf upon its arrival here Monday morning.
On the other hand, TF C-130 has suspended the deployment of any of its vessels Monday as their available sonar equipment has not shown the location of the ill-fated aircraft.
Starting at 15 nautical miles south of Talicud Island, the USNS John MacDonnell was moving in an east-west direction to cover the supposed crash site.
USNS MacDonnell or T-AGS 51 is a 208-foot long oceanographic survey ship, one of seven in the US Navy. It is part of the 29 ships in the US Military Sealift Command's Special Mission Ships Program.
The John MacDonnell class of survey ship carries 34-foot survey launches for data collection in coastal regions with depths between 10m and 600m (32.78 feet and 1,967 feet) and in deep water to 4,000m (13,114.75 feet). A small diesel is used for propulsion at towing speeds of up to 6 knots. SIMRAD high-frequency active hull-mounted and side scan sonars are also on the ship.
MacDonnell is one of two oceanographic ships surveying the sea bottom to gather hydrographic data "charting three-fourth of the world's coastlines", an entry about the ship in GlobalSecurity.org reads.
The data being gathered by these two ships help navigators find their way along well-traveled and not-so-familiar shipping routes.
Designed to study the world's oceans, the sonar systems on these survey ships allow them to "continuously chart a broad strip of ocean floor."There is a need for the retrieval of major parts of the wreckage that lies in deep water, to determine the cause of the crash.
Gonzales added that the USNS John MacDonnell will be given a free hand and that no restrictions on the foreign vessel will be imposed.
A week has passed since the crash yet Philippine authorities have still not found the exact location of the wreckage. Authorities have already discounted the possibility of survivors.
As of Monday, Task Force C-130 has focused on "visual contact" of the wreckage and will be utilizing the Navy Seals Team and volunteer civilian divers for the purpose. Divers will be deployed in identified possible areas where the plane crashed to search for the wreckage.
But this will only come once the USNS MacDonnell submits its findings to the central office of the Philippine Navy.
The past days, authorities used an echo sounder (sonar) on board a Navy boat and a fish finder sonar to look for the wreckage. Through these efforts, several areas have been identified as possible sites of the crash.
The 37-year-old US-made aircraft lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly after taking off from Davao airport at around 8:51 p.m. Monday. The Philippine military has ruled out its own earlier suggestion that it could have been shot down by Muslim insurgents.
The C-130 was manned by Major Manuel Zambrano with Captain Adrian de Dios as co-pilot. The plane has seven other crew members identified as T/Sgt. Lobregas Constantino, S/Sgt. John Ariola, S/Sgt. Gery Dionisio, S/Sgt. Felix Patriaca, S/Sgt. Pedronelo Fernandez, S/Sgt. Patricio Romeo Gaor, S/Sgt. Aldrin Illustrisimo and two other Philippine Army personnel who arrived to escort military equipment brought in by the plane and thus were not in the Davao manifest.
The plane left Davao City past 8 p.m. and two minutes after, it crashed. It was supposed to arrive in Iloilo City at 10 p.m. Earlier, the plane transported around 84 Scout Ranger soldiers to Davao from Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija.
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