Tue, Oct 26, 1999 page4

• Crashed Mirage finally located

  FIGHTER ACCIDENT An air force jet that is suspected to have crashed because a bird was sucked into its engine has been found. Now the military is mulling the dangerous task of salvaging the wreckage

  • By Brian Hsu / STAFF REPORTER
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  After an intensive 10-day search of the coast of Miaoli County in east Taiwan, air force teams yesterday located the wreckage of a Mirage 2000-5 jet fighter which crashed on Oct. 15.

  "Navy divers first discovered part of the plane's right wing before they found the fuselage, which was largely intact," said Air Force Colonel Yu Liao-huo (游1??/CHINESE>), director of political warfare at the Hsinchu air base, where the Mirage had been based.

  To prove that the recovered plane was in fact the Mirage they were looking for, navy divers brought a part of the plane to the surface. They said the piece was a hook point belonging to the aircraft.

  The twin-seat Mirage crashed into the sea Oct. 15, shortly after it took off from the Hsinchu base for a night-flight training mission. Both pilots ejected to safety.

  The cause of the accident is suspected to have been a bird sucked into the plane's engine.

  However, evidence to support this theory may have already been destroyed by the length of time that the plane has been under water.

  "No further recovery work will be needed today. Our priority now is to find out the best way to get the plane up from the bottom of the sea," Liao said.

  The wreckage was located 24 meters below the surface, around two nautical miles off Miaoli's Chiting (崎3?/CHINESE>) coastline, air force officials said.

  "We have several options to choose from. The first is to lift the plane out of the sea with a barge," said an official with the navy's Fleet Salvage Unit (海-x救難?j?), which is responsible for the recovery work. The unit, based in Kaohsiung's Tsoying, is one of the elite forces in the country.

  "Otherwise, we could use flotation bags, which are tied around the wreckage and then air is pumped into them. After they are inflated, the wreckage should float to the surface," said the official, who declined to be identified.

  "The first option is most likely the one we will use because the second will put divers at risk of decompression sickness," he said.

  "The reason for this is that as the float bags inflate, they will rapidly move upwards. This would cause divers steadying the bags to rise too quickly," he said.

  "Raising the wreckage from the bottom will not necessarily be easy. There is always the danger that steel cables used in the operation could snap."

  In response to media reports that the military might consider hiring civilian rescue companies to salvage the plane, the official said the military's first concern is the safety of servicemen involved in such an operation.

  "Working at a depth where the plane is located is acceptable to the Fleet Salvage Unit (USV) since it has carried out similar missions at deeper sea levels before," he said.

  "However, if higher-ranking officials feel that the risk of injury or death is too great to allow their soldiers to attempt the salvage, they will most likely contract the job out to a civilian company. The officers would not be willing to jeopardize their careers by putting their men into such a risky situation," he said.

  A good example of the military's policy in dealing with such operations is the recovery of an AH-1W attack helicopter which crashed into a reservoir in Taichung County last July. In that incident, the military had a civilian company do the extraction work," he said.
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