Five-day search for Marine missing at sea ends without success

Officials investigate incident involving unnamed victim.

The U.S. military has concluded an unsuccessful fiveday search for a Marine who is believed to have gone overboard from an amphibious assault ship off the coast of the Philippines, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The Marine was amember of the 13 th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a force deployed aboard the USS Essex and two other ships. The Marine was reported missing Thursday at 9:40 a.m. while the ship was crossing the Sulu Sea west of the Philippines. That prompted a round-the-clock scramble in which 13,000 nautical square miles of the Sulu Sea, the Mindanao Sea and the Surigao Strait were searched with more than 110 flights by U.S. aircraft, the Marine Corps said in a statement.

The Marines received additional help from the U.S. Embassy in the Philippines, the U.S. Coast Guard and the government of Singapore, Marine officials said. U.S. personnel searched using high-powered binoculars aboard ships, and from helicopters and P-8 reconnaissance planes overhead.

“Only after exhausting every possibility through persistent and thorough search efforts, we have concluded the at-sea search and rescue effort for our Marine,” said U.S. Navy Capt. Gerald Olin, the commander of the Navy squadron involved. “We appreciate the continued support provided to us fromthe U.S. Embassy and the Philippines government.”

The commander of the Marine’ sun it, Col. Chandler Nelms, said in the statementthat the Marines demonstrated“tremendous resilienceand put for than extraordinary effort over the past five days.” Hewas humbled, he said, by the teamwork and professionalism of the Marines and sailors involved in the search.

The missing Marin e’ s family has been notified of his disappearance, but he or she has not been named. The incident is under investigation, U.S. officials said.

The units involved departed from their home port in San Diego in July, and deployed on the Essex and two other amphibious ships, the USS Anchorage and the USS Rush more. The search began in the Sulu Sea, and eventually was widened.