CANBERRA, Australia—The search for an Australian army helicopter that crashed at sea last week, killing four soldiers, discovered human remains but not the black box critical to explaining the disaster, an official said on Thursday.
The major concerns since an MRH-90 Taipan helicopter crashed on July 28 during a nighttime mission in the Whitsunday Islands off the northeast Australian coast have been the recovery of the four air crew and the black box flight data recorder.
On Wednesday, an underwater drone detected the human remains and a portion of the cockpit at a depth of 40 meters (131 feet), according to Army Lt.-Gen. Greg Bilton is the operation's coordinator.
“The debris field is consistent with a catastrophic, high impact” with the ocean surface, Mr. Bilton told reporters.
He stated that the Australian navy will soon deploy specialist equipment to rescue the debris and corpses.
Bad weather and strong currents have delayed the search and recovery mission, which has engaged both the US and Canadian forces.
The black box, which stores flight data and cockpit voice recordings, was judged to be recovered.
“It’s a difficult task but we’ll do our absolute best to find it and, as you know, the black box is critical to helping us to understand what’s actually taken place,” Mr. Bilton said.
The Taipan had been participating in Talisman Sabre, a biannual US-Australia military exercise headquartered mostly in Queensland state. This year's exercise includes 13 countries and around 30,000 military men.
Mr. Bilton stated that a French Airbus helicopter was flying with three other planes and that "communications were normal" before to the disaster.
A rescue attempt was immediately launched, but officials said on Monday that there was no longer any hope of rescuing survivors.
Since the incident, Australia's fleet of more than 40 Taipans has been grounded, and it is unlikely that any will fly again.
In January, the administration revealed intentions to replace them with 40 U.S. Helicopters called Black Hawks. The Taipans retiring in December 2024 would be 13 years sooner than Australia had intended.
Since that statement, the fleet has been grounded since March, when a Taipan sank off the coast of New South Wales, near the navy station at Jervis Bay, during a nighttime counterterrorism training exercise. The ten passengers and crew members were all saved.
