By Lee Tae-hoon
Staff Reporter
A second Navy anti-submarine helicopter went down in the West Sea, Saturday, less than a week after another Lynx chopper crashed in the same sea, leaving one dead and three others missing.
All three crew members of the second Lynx were rescued after it made an emergency landing at around 10:13 p.m. in waters off the west coast.
The British-made helicopter was on its way back to its 4,500-ton destroyer ``mother-ship'' after a patrol mission that involved identifying a mysterious object, which Navy officials said was found to have been a flock of birds.
The ill-fated aircraft landed some 23 kilometers south of Socheong Island but stayed afloat water until a rescue team arrived at around 7 a.m. to lift it onto a ship for transport.
An investigation is underway to ascertain the cause of the accident.
The emergency landing was the second incident last week involving the Lynx, which is widely used by the armed forces of a dozen nations.
South Korea has 25 Lynx helicopters, which are used in detecting enemy submarines and illegal fishing boats. The two crashed choppers entered service in 1991.
Officials said all remaining aircraft have been grounded for safety inspections, though the possibility of airframe deterioration is slim.
Military experts say the helicopter could crashed due to sudden drastic weather changes or an error by the pilot, who might have been suffering from extreme fatigue due to missions related to the rescue of the sunken frigate Cheonan.
The Lynx helicopters are equipped with torpedoes and a ``dipping sonar'' that can be lowered 300 meters into the water to detect submarines.
A Lynx helicopter is part of the Navy's counter-piracy Cheonghae unit in the Gulf of Aden off the Somali coast.