THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 24, 1996 TAG: 9607240355
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JACK DORSEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ABOARD THE OAK HILL LENGTH: 41 lines
Loaded with electronics and small boats, the Navy's newest amphibious ship has steamed for the coast of Long Island, N.Y., where today it will join a flotilla of ships searching for fragments of TWA Flight 800.
The dock landing ship Oak Hill pulled out of Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base on Tuesday afternoon, picked up several small boats offshore, then made for Moriches Inlet on Long Island's south-central coast.
The 609-foot ship will serve as a floating command post for the Navy's growing role in the search for wreckage and victims of the TWA jetliner, which fell flaming into the Atlantic July 17.
Rear Adm. Edward K. Kristensen, commander of Combat Logistics Group 2 at Little Creek, said the Navy ordered the ship to get underway after the National Transportation Safety Board requested additional help in locating and salvaging wreckage from the plane.
Kristensen will oversee the Navy's salvage efforts, which had already seen the service's divers, explosive ordnance demolition units and the salvage ship Grasp dispatched to the scene.
Commissioned last month, the Oak Hill carries sophisticated mapping and detection gear to help search a 2-by-5-mile section of ocean where most of the wrecked jet is believed to be concentrated.
The multipurpose amphibious ship also is able to deploy small boats from its flooded well deck and helicopters from its flight deck.
Kristensen said the ship was notified Monday to be ready to sail. The orders came within hours of the Grasp's departure from Hampton Roads for the crash site.
The larger ship was scheduled to leave Little Creek at 4 p.m. and anchor off Lynnhaven Inlet to take on smaller vessels and equipment, before heading north. ILLUSTRATION: ASSOCIATED PRESS photo
There is nothing routine about the Oak Hill's first deployment, as
the amphibious ship leaves to join the search for missing fragments
of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island in New York. by CNB