7 Marines die in Calif. copter collision

SAN DIEGO -- Seven Marines died when two helicopters collided over a remote section of the California desert during a nighttime exercise, in one of the Corps' deadliest training accidents in years.

There were no survivors in the latest crash involving troops from Camp Pendleton, officials said yesterday.

Two of the Marines were the crew of an AH-1W Cobra attack helicopter and five were in a UH-1 Huey utility helicopter that collided Wednesday night near the Chocolate Mountains along the border with Arizona, said Lt. Maureen Dooley of Miramar Air Base in San Diego.

Six of the victims were from Camp Pendleton, the largest base on the West Coast, and one from Marine Corps Air Station Yuma in Arizona. Their identities are being withheld until their families have been notified.

The weather was mild Wednesday night when the helicopters were flying as part of a two-week standard training exercise called "Scorpion Fire" involving about 450 troops from the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing.

The wing has about 17,500 Marines and sailors, including six helicopter squadrons that fly Cobras and Hueys. It's headquartered at Miramar and also has personnel stationed at Camp Pendleton and Yuma.

The helicopters collided at 8:45 p.m. near dunes at the edge of the Yuma range. Ground troops were in the area, but were not affected, said Gunnery Sgt. Dustin Dunk, a spokesman at Air Station Yuma, a 90-minute drive from the crash site.

It was the fifth time since March that Marine Corps aircraft have crashed during a training exercise in California. But in the past five years, there have only been two other aviation training accidents in the Navy and the Marine Corps involving seven or more deaths, according to the Navy.

Retired Marine Col. J.F. Joseph, an aviation safety consultant, said Marine aviators are always at risk as they train to become combat-ready.

"It's an unfortunate consequence of the high tempo of operations," he said. "They're out there working on the edge, trying to exploit the maximum capabilities of the aircraft and their tactics. Just by the virtue of that, in becoming combat-ready, these unfortunately are not uncommon occurrences."

Part of the exercise involved having helicopters low on fuel descend to ground troops that had set up a refueling outpost, Dunk said. He did not know whether that's what the pilots were doing when they crashed, which happened about an hour before the range was to shut down for the night.

Officials were scrambling after sunrise to gather evidence at the crash site in the Yuma Training Range Complex.

The 1.2 million-acre range in Arizona and southeastern California is favored by the U.S. military and its allies for training because the hot, dusty conditions and craggy mountains replicate Afghanistan's environment and the clear weather allows for constant flying.