Rescuers scour seas 2 days after crash

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By Gillian Flaccus ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN DIEGO | Families of nine military members lost at sea held out hope Saturday that their loved ones survived a midair collision between a Coast Guard airplane and a Marine Corps helicopter, even as a second full day of searching dragged on with no news.

Jennifer Wiegandt Seidman she said hopes her husband, Chief Petty Officer John Seidman, was wearing a protective drysuit when he entered the chilly Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, where water temperatures have hovered in the low 60s.

Petty Officer Seidman is a flight engineer with 23 years in the Coast Guard.

"I don't want to let my mind go to thinking the worst," Mrs. Seidman said from the couple's home in Carmichael, Calif. "John knows what he's doing, and he's fit and he's very smart. They're saying that they're still looking."

The Seidmans married in 2001, and Petty Officer Seidman, 43, is stepfather to her three children, aged 10, 12 and 13, she said.

"I don't want to talk about him like he's gone," she said, choking back tears.

That possibility, however, loomed large over the rescue operation Saturday as Coast Guard helicopters came and went from a landing area near a popular waterside path that teemed with joggers and bikers - nearly 48 hours after the aircraft crashed at 7:10 p.m. Thursday.

Six Coast Guard cutters, three Navy ships and multiple helicopters were searching 644 square miles of ocean, but rescuers were concentrating on a debris field 50 miles off the San Diego coast. Rescuers found debris from both aircraft, but there was no sign of the crew members or their bodies.

The mission was still considered search and rescue, not search and recovery, Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class Jetta Disco said Saturday.

Thursday's crash involved a Coast Guard C-130, with a seven-member crew, and a two-person Marine Corps AH-1W Super Cobra that was flying in formation near the Navy's San Clemente Island, a site with training ranges for amphibious, air, surface and undersea warfare.