Search goes on for Army copter with 5 aboard missing off Kaena Point

The search for five crew members from an Army Black Hawk helicopter that went down off Oahu’s Kaena Point on a nighttime training mission stretched into a second night Wednesday as the Coast Guard remained on the scene and soldiers held out hope that the missing would be found.

The five on board — two pilots and three crew members — on the missing UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter are with the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade at Wheeler Army Airfield.

Maj. Gen. Christopher Cavoli, commander of the 25th Infantry Division, said the missing soldiers’ family members have all been notified and updated on ongoing operations to find the missing aircrew.

“We continue to search with our partners in the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, the Honolulu Fire Department, and Honolulu Ocean Rescue,” Cavoli said in a news release. “Our thoughts and prayers are with our missing soldiers and their families. They can count on our full support during this difficult time. We are proud of their loved ones’ service and will bring them home.”

The Coast Guard was joined in the search by multiple agencies, and a search-and-rescue command center was set up at Haleiwa Harbor. While Coast Guard crews continued searching through Wednesday night, operations by the Honolulu Fire Department, Honolulu Ocean Safety and others were to resume this morning.

Lt. Col. Curt Kellogg, spokesman for the 25th Infantry Division, stressed Wednesday afternoon that “this is still a search-and-rescue mission. We are here to bring our soldiers home to their families.”

Two UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters from the 25th Combat Aviation Brigade were involved in a routine night-training mission Tuesday night off Kaena Point when the second helicopter lost radio and visual contact with the first helicopter.

The first helicopter was reported missing at about 9:30 p.m.

The Coast Guard received a call from Wheeler at 10:08 p.m. that the airfield had lost communications with one of its air crews. The Coast Guard launched a rescue operation and issued an urgent marine broadcast.

“A debris field was spotted near Kaena Point by the Coast Guard Hercules and Army Black Hawk aircrews at 11:28 p.m. Tuesday,” the Coast Guard said in a news release. A helmet and what looked like a ragged piece of fuselage were recovered.

Evelyn Mallory of Ko Olina said she was on the second floor of her residence when she heard a loud “vibration” sound at about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. She believes the sound may have been the Black Hawk helicopters passing her home. Mallory described the sound as unusual because it was so close to her residence.

The soldiers were training at night to maintain the skills they need to do their jobs, Kellogg said. “Our aviation assets, as well as all of our soldiers, train at night. It’s what we do,” he said. They need these skills to accomplish their wartime mission, Kellogg said.

Coast Guard Lt. Scott Carr said the search was concentrated in an area about 5 miles off Kaena Point where the water is about 500 to 600 feet deep.

Lt. John Hoogsteden with Honolulu Ocean Safety said ocean conditions included 3- to 6-foot swells and winds over 20 mph. “It’s a pretty choppy disorganized ocean,” he said.

The Coast Guard said there were 17-mph winds with 6-foot seas early Wednesday evening.

Several large Army trucks were at the harbor, along with members of the Army’s Downed Aircraft Recovery Team. “If the debris comes here, we will have to deal with it,” Kellogg said.

Suspected crash debris along the shoreline could contain “everything from fuel to sharp edges,” Kellogg said. But the helicopter was unlikely to have been carrying ordnance since it was involved in a night-training, troop-transport mission, he said.

Honolulu Fire spokesman Capt. David Jenkins said firefighters on a rescue boat worked with the Army to recover debris after fire rescue crews reported spotting apparent fuselage material and a helmet at about 6:17 a.m. Jenkins said a rescue boat recovered the debris and turned it over to the Army at the Haleiwa boat ramp.

HFD was called at 12:10 a.m. to assist the Coast Guard, and an HFD spokesman said four units responded in a sea and shoreline search. Firefighters and Honolulu police were at Haleiwa Harbor, where HFD set up a command center before dawn.

Honolulu’s Ocean Safety Division launched four rescue watercraft to conduct a nearshore search for the five-member crew, and it also was able to locate debris.

The Coast Guard said search participants were:

>> Coast Guard HC-130 Hercules aircrew, Air Station Barbers Point

>> Coast Guard MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew, Air Station Barbers Point

>> Coast Guard cutter Ahi and crew, an 87-foot patrol boat

>> A 45-foot response boat and crew, Coast Guard Station Honolulu

>> CH-47 Chinook helicopter crew, Wheeler

>> MH-60R Seahawk helicopter crew, Navy Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 37

>> P-3 Orion aircrew, Marine Corps Base Hawaii at Kaneohe Bay

>> Shore patrols and a helicopter crew from Honolulu Fire Department

>> Crews from the city’s Ocean Safety Division and a crew from the state Department of Land and Natural Resources

The Coast Guard cutter Walnut and crew, a 225-foot buoy tender homeported in Honolulu, will also join the search.

“We are working closely with our partners to saturate that entire area,” Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Tara Molle said.

The Department of Land and Natural Resources’ Division of State Parks temporarily closed Kaena Point State Park on Wednesday. Park officials said there would be “no vehicle, foot, or bicycle traffic” allowed on roads and trails through the Mokuleia or the Keawaula sections of the park.

Kellogg praised the multi-agency effort to find the missing soldiers. “Everyone here is committed to this endeavor that you see before you,” he said.

The UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-bladed, twin-engine utility helicopter manufactured for the Army by Sikorsky Aircraft starting in the 1970s.

More than 3,000 Black Hawk aircraft are in service around the world, according to Sikorsky’s parent company Lockheed Martin. The U.S. Army owns 2,300 of them.

This is the second nighttime military helicopter crash off Oahu in less than two years.

On Jan. 14, 2016, 12 Marines were killed after two CH-53E Super Stallion helicopters collided off Oahu’s North Shore. The crash occurred at about 10:40 p.m. during a training mission. One of the two helicopters had accelerated to catch up to the first helicopter just as the first helicopter made an abrupt left turn into the second helicopter’s path.

Twelve Marines in the two aircraft were killed upon impact. The collision occurred at an altitude of 1,500 feet and almost 2 miles off the North Shore.

Star-Advertiser staff writers Andrew Gomes, William Cole, Leila Fujimori and Chelsee Yee and The Associated Press contributed to this report.