Navy names lost sailors, begins recovery of bodies
One of the 10 is confirmed dead after Monday crash.
The U.S. Navy on Thursday turned its searchand-rescue mission to find 10 missing sailors from the USS John S. McCain into a recovery operation, an acknowledgment that it does not expect to find any of them alive.
It also named the 10 who have been missing since the guided-missile destroyer and an oil tanker collided near Singapore before dawn Monday.
“After more than 80 hours of multinational search efforts, the U.S. Navy suspended search and rescue efforts for missing USS John S. McCain (DDG 56) Sailors in an approximately 2,100-square mile area east of the Straits of Malacca and Singapore,” the 7th Fleet, to which the McCain belongs, said in a statement Thursday.
The Navy said it had recovered the remains of one sailor, Electronics Technician 3rd Class Kenneth Aaron Smith, 22, from New Jersey. It said it will continue search operations inside flooded compartments in the ship.
The remains of some of the 10 sailors had been found in compartments on the damaged ship, said Adm. Scott Swift, the commander of the Pacific Fleet. He did not disclose how many bodies had been located.
The American, Singaporean and Malaysian navies had been searching an area at sea covering about 900 square nautical miles around the point where the collision occurred.
The Malaysian Navy found a body during the search and handed it over to the U.S. Navy, which determined it was not one of its sailors and returned it to Malaysian authorities, the 7th Fleet said in a statement.
Five sailors were injured in the collision, and the four who needed hospital treatment were released Wednesday and returned to their duties.
The McCain is named for the father and grandfather of John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, both of whom served as admirals in the Navy.
An investigation has begun into how the destroyer and the oil tanker collided.
The Navy’s top admiral Monday ordered a fleetwide review of seamanship and training in the Pacific after the McCain collision, and Wednesday the admiral in charge of the 7th Fleet was removed from his position.
The McCain collision is the fourth incident involving a U.S. Navy vessel at sea in Asia this year, and the second collision in just over two months involving a destroyer in the 7th Fleet, which is based at Yokosuka in Japan.