Los Angeles Times: San Diego Base Already in Mourning

[url]http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-helicopter-crash-base0121jan21.story?coll=sns%2Dap%2Dnation%2Dheadlines[/url]

San Diego Base Already in Mourning
By SETH HETTENA
Associated Press Writer

January 21 2002, 3:34 AM PST

Jeanne Cohee felt a knot of dread develop as soon as the contingent of Marine
Corps representatives pulled up to her Maryland house.

"My kitchen window faces the driveway and when I looked out and there were three
Marines ... I knew they were not coming to give me good news," she said.

The representatives had come Sunday to inform her that her son, Staff Sgt.
Walter F. "Trae" Cohee III, was one of two Marines killed in a helicopter crash
in Afghanistan

Walter Cohee and Sgt. Dwight J. Morgan died shortly after their CH-53E Super
Stallion took off from a former Soviet base outside the capital, Kabul. Five
others aboard were injured.

Both men were based at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, which on Thursday held
a tearful memorial for seven others killed Jan. 9 in a Pakistan plane crash.

"It's like someone stepping on your heart," Major T.V. Johnson, a base
spokesman, said Sunday. "The Marine Corps is like a big family but what we feel
is just a fraction of what the families are feeling now."

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the cause of the latest crash appeared to
be mechanical failure.

Cohee, 26, of Mardela Springs, Md., was a communication and navigation system
technician who joined the Marines in 1993. He had been scheduled to come home in
early January, said Jeanne Cohee.

But they needed him to stay and work on the helicopters, and her son wasn't the
kind to complain, she said.

"He said, 'Mom, I didn't join the Marines to sit still. I joined the Marines to
help,'" Cohee told WBOC-TV.

Morgan, a 24-year-old helicopter mechanic who joined the Marines in 1998, lived
in Mendocino County, about 125 miles north of San Francisco. He had been
selected for a promotion to staff sergeant, which will now be awarded
posthumously, Johnson said.

Classmates and friends remembered Morgan as shy and kind.

"I know his family was real proud of his accomplishments," said Keller McDonald,
Morgan's former high school principal.

The helicopter went down 10 p.m. EST Saturday about 40 miles south of Bagram air
base. The Super Stallions are designed for the transport of troops, supplies and
equipment.

Since the 30-passenger, long-range Super Stallion came into service in 1981,
there have been seven major crashes and 20 deaths.

The Marines halted flights for all 165 of their CH-53E Super Stallions for three
weeks in 2000 based on findings of a helicopter crash off the coast of Texas, in
which four people were killed. CH-53E flights also were halted in 1996 when a
Super Stallion crashed, killing four.

Johnson said Sunday he knew of no orders to ground the helicopters. The previous
crash that claimed the lives of seven Marines involved a KC-130 that exploded
after slamming into a mountain in southwestern Pakistan.

Miramar is the former home of the Navy flight school popularized in the movie
"Top Gun."

The San Diego-based Marines were part of a squadron known as the Flying Tigers,
which had been deployed to the region before Christmas, Johnson said.

The squadron has a 50-year history. In their first mission, the Flying Tigers
provided support in the largest helicopter exercise ever -- an atomic test
exercise at Desert Rock, Nev. They also deployed during the Cuban Missile Crisis
and the Vietnam War.

The injured were: Cpl. David. J. Lynne, 23, from Mecklenburg County, N.C.; Cpl.
Ivan A. Montanez, 22, from Royse City, Texas; Cpl. Stephen A. Sullivan, 24, from
Pickens, S.C.; Capt. William J. Cody, 30, from Middlesex, N.J., and Capt.
Douglas V. Glasgow, 33, from Wooster, Ohio.

Glasgow is based at Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Ariz.
___

On the Net:

Flying Tigers: http://www.miramar.usmc.mil
Copyright 2002 Associated Press