Search efforts continue for bodies, debris in military crash off Africa
     WINDHOEK, Namibia (September 17, 1997 07:21 a.m. EDT) - Crews in
 six planes scanned the waters off Namibia's Skeleton Coast Wednesday
 in search of bodies and wreckage from the collision of U.S. and
 German military aircraft.
     An overnight search by three U.S. C-130s equipped with special
 night-vision equipment turned up only one small piece of wreckage,
 Lt. Col. Stony Steenkamp of the South African air force said
 Wednesday.
     Heavy fog and strong wind limited the overnight search to six
 hours. Conditions clear enough by daylight for the effort to resume.
     "The search will continue as long as necessary," Steenkamp said.
 "There is no thought yet of putting it off."
     Searchers have recovered only one body -- that of an unidenti-
 fied woman -- which was taken to a morgue in Windhoek for examina-
 tion. Three women were among the 24 people aboard the German plane;
 all nine aboard the American plane were men.
     Germany was sending a specialized PC3-Orion search aircraft
 Wednesday, German Maj. Gen. Gerhard Back said in Windhoek. "We hope
 for better results," he said.
     Searchers on Tuesday found debris from a U.S. cargo plane in the
 same place where they found remnants of a German aircraft, confirm-
 ing that the two military planes collided about 115 miles west of
 Cape Fria on the Namibian coast.
     The French frigate Florial had joined two Namibian vessels that
 have been collecting debris since Monday.
     The prospects of finding survivors were slim, officials said.
 Nothing had been heard since faint distress signals were detected
 Sunday and early Monday.
     The Pentagon has said early information indicated the planes
 were flying at an altitude of about 35,000 feet when the crash
 occurred. Air corridors often are shared, but planes traveling in
 opposite directions are supposed to fly at different altitudes.
     Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the two aircraft were on
 different radio frequencies, although he did not know why.
     Officials also were trying to determine why the planes' dis-
 appearance was not reported to rescue officials for almost 24 hours.
     Namibian officials said they didn't know the German plane was
 coming because they had not received a flight plan.
     A German Defense Ministry spokesman, Navy Capt. Hans-Joachim
 Liedtke, said Tuesday a plan was filed with Niamey, Niger, in cen-
 tral Africa, and should have been passed on to the next station,
 the Namibian capital Windhoek.
     Bacon said U.S. Air Force officials in Ascension Island began
 calling Namibia shortly after the American plane should have de-
 parted, but got no answer.
     They tried to locate the aircraft over the next night, so it was
 not declared missing until nearly 20 hours after officials first
 began querying its whereabouts.
 -------------------------------
     Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sept. 17 _ A U.N. helicopter with
 16 people on board crashed today in central Bosnia, killing 12
 people, among them a top international mediator and an American
 diplomat.
      At least one of four crew members, all Ukranian, are believed
 to have survived.
      U.N. and NATO helicopters were sent to the crash site to
 search for survivors and possible clues as to the cause of the
 crash.
      German envoy Gerd Wagner, one of the most senior diplomats
 stationed in Bosnia, was killed in the crash.  Wagner, 55, was a
 deputy to Carlos Westendorp of Spain,  the high representative to
 Bosnia in charge of trying to implement peace.
      Wagner was en route to negotiations in Bugojno, about 50 miles
 northwest of Sarajevo, when the helicopter went down in high
 terrain, a diplomat said.
      Wagner was one of five people from Westendorp's office on board.
 The other four included two Germans, a Briton and the American, the
 diplomat said, speaking on condition of anonymity. The victims'
 names were not released.
                          Hit Dense Fog
     According to one of the survivors, the weather was fine when
 the helicopter left Sarajevo, but it encountered dense fog west of
 Fojnica, 20 miles east of Bugojno, U.N. spokesman Liam McDowall
 said.
     "They attempted to gain altitude, but ran into a mountainside,"
 McDowall said.
      The United Nations said 11 people were killed in the crash,
 but Western diplomats said 12 were killed. It was not immediately
 clear if the survivors were all crew members.
 ---------------------------------------------
 --
--- DB 1.39/004487
---------------