USNS McDonnell locates wreckage of C-130 plane

(Updated 1:12 p.m.) MANILA, Philippines - The US survey ship has located what appeared to be the wreckage of the Philippine Air Force C-130 cargo plane that crashed on the night of August 25 in Davao Gulf, a regional military spokesman said Friday. Citing field reports from Task Force Hercules, Maj. Armand Rico of the Armed Forces Eastern Mindanao Command said the USNS John McDonnell located the wreckage at 1.3 nautical miles east of Bucana village in Davao City. The wreckage was located under the sea at the depth of 130 meters, Rico said. He added that the US survey ship got the location about 9 p.m. Thursday. "At present, the survey ship is collating its data as other major part of the aircraft has also been detected in the seabed of Davao Gulf," Rico said. At Camp Aguinaldo, Philippine Navy spokesman Lt. Col. Edgard Arevalo said what the US ship saw was mere images of the ill-fated aircraft. "From the information we have gathered, they (Americans) were able to get images of the wreckage...So far, what they were able to see were merely images of the aircraft," Arevalo told reporters. Arevalo said the plan is to retrieve the wreckage to help investigators establish the exact cause of the crash. The Navy spokesman hinted that assistance would be needed, noting the Philippine Navy has no capability to do the job. Likewise, Arevalo said Navy divers could not dive to check the wreckage with their present equipment. "They can only dive to as deep as about 300 feet so there is an increment of about another 126 and that would really make the diving very difficult." A radio report earlier said that divers were preparing to get to the scene to search for debris and possibly the remains of the crew, amid cloudy weather. Earlier in the day, Air Force spokesman Maj. Gerry Zamudio said the latest development would prove helpful in the ongoing investigation into the crash. "This new location of the wreckage...is very important in the ongoing investigation of the PAF team because this will provide us with more information in (determining eventually) what was the cause of the crash," Zamudio said. "We would just like to appeal to everyone to bear with the meticulous process of the investigation," he added. The C-130 crashed off Davao on August while en route to Iloilo to pick up members of the Presidential Security Group (PSG). A total of 11 military personnel were feared to have died from the crash. - GMANews.TV