3 Marines’ Bodies Were Found Days Ago by Navy at Crash Site

CAMP PENDLETON —  Even as hundreds gathered this week to mourn four El Toro Marines lost when their helicopter crashed into the ocean, military crews had discovered three of the bodies, Navy officials said Friday.

Members of the Navy’s Deep Submergence Unit were training about six miles off the coast of Camp Pendleton early Monday when they used high-frequency sonar to find wreckage of the CH-46 Sea Knight that crashed May 10, Navy Cmdr. Jack Papp said Friday.

The 20-member team, working from a support ship, hadn’t planned the search until they realized they were at the crash site, Papp said.

“They wound up approximately at the same latitude and longitude, and lo and behold they found the wreckage,” he said.

A search for the wreckage by the Marines, Navy and Coast Guard was halted after one day because officials had exhausted “all possible means of finding survivors,” a Marine spokesman said on May 12. Family members said they asked military officials to continue looking, but were told it was over.

“We were upset,” said Nicholas Tsoris of Wisconsin, the father of the helicopter’s crew chief. “We were being forced to accept the fact that we may never recover our son’s body.”

Tsoris joined the family members and 400 other mourners on Monday for the memorial service at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. A Navy chaplain acknowledged the additional hardship the families faced being unable to bury their loved ones and prayed that “one day, the bodies will be discovered.”

In fact, three of the bodies had been. Using Mystic, a deep submergence vessel, the Navy team was able to dive nearly 2,100 feet to examine the wreckage with video cameras, Papp said.

The team then sent down Scorpio, an unmanned, remote-controlled vessel, which has robotic-type arms and is the size of a Volkswagen Bug, to pull the bodies from the wreckage. The process took nearly two days to complete, Papp said.

“It’s very methodical work,” he said. “Even the slightest change in weather can affect the process.”

Lt. Megan Mason said families of the Marines were told about the discovery on Thursday. Marine Corps officials waited until all three bodies were successfully recovered before calling relatives, to avoid “giving false hope,” she said.

“They were not told immediately because we didn’t want to alert them unnecessarily,” Mason said. “We wanted to make sure we could get the bodies to the surface. Deep sea recovery is very, very difficult.”

The search for the fourth man resumed this week, Mason said.

“Now that we have a targeted area, we hope it will bring us to that last Marine,” she said.

The helicopter crashed into the ocean off north San Diego County moments after its 9:30 p.m. takeoff from the Juneau, investigators said. Searchers recovered some debris and a portion of the fuselage from the helicopter, a 45-foot, double-engine aircraft that is among the oldest in the U.S. military.

The victims were Lance Cpl. Rodolfo Guajardo Jr., 21, of Beach Park, Ill.; Maj. Dennis A. Dogs, 34, the pilot, of Mission Viejo; Capt. Paul D. Barnes, 27, of Lawrenceburg, Ky.; and Cpl. Michael J. Tsoris, 21, of Racine, Wis.

All four were part of an El Toro helicopter squadron serving with the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The men were preparing for a six-month deployment by practicing skills that typically involve transporting Marines out of combat zones, officials said.

The bodies were taken Friday to Balboa Naval Hospital, where autopsies will be conducted and positive identification will be made, a Marine spokeswoman said.

No information has been released about the Navy’s ongoing investigation of the accident, but Tsoris said finding three of the four Marines has encouraged his family.

“We’re waiting for them to tell us if one of the bodies is Michael,” said Tsoris, 58. “We feel anxiety now, waiting for that, but we’re relieved that we may now have some peace.”