Investigation under way into deadly Navy helicopter crash

Monday, Sept. 28, 1998 | 9:39 a.m.

A Navy helicopter involved in a search for a missing private aircraft crashed on a remote central Nevada mountain Saturday, killing two crew members and injuring two others.

The wreckage of the civilian plane was located Sunday in the same area by another Navy helicopter.

"This is our third mishap with fatalities this year and it does put a somber mood on the base," Fallon Naval Air Station spokeswoman Anne McMillin said Sunday.

On May 28, a Navy helicopter crashed during training exercises east of Fallon, killing one crew member and injuring nine others. Just one day earlier, a Navy fighter went down nearby, killing one man.

Early this month, two Air Force helicopters on a joint training exercise crashed in the Nevada desert near the top-secret Area 51, killing all 12 crew members aboard.

"There's definitely an element of risk, but it won't stop us from our mission," McMillin said. "Right now, our efforts are focused on the families of the deceased and injured, and doing what we can to help them through their grief."

The two crew members killed Saturday were identified as Petty Officer 2nd class Lee M. Dengler, 27, and Lt. Cmdr. Brian C. Gurr, 35.

Dengler, a native of Mertztown Berks, Pa., was married with two children. Gurr, a White Bear Lake, Minn., native who had been assigned to the Fallon base for the last several years, was married with three children.

Escaping with minor injuries were Lt. Craig M. Bennett and Chief Petty Officer Larry F. Favors, whose hometowns were unavailable.

The two injured crew members and Dengler were assigned to a squadron based at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station in Maryland. They had been training at Fallon when they joined a search for a missing civilian plane Saturday.

Their H-60 helicopter was reported missing early Saturday afternoon. Three other military aircraft located the downed helicopter on Mount Grant near Hawthorne, located 150 miles southeast of Reno.

The crash is under investigation by the Navy.

"There are no indications at this point as to the cause," McMillin said. "It probably was raining there at the time, but we don't know if weather was a factor yet."

Another Navy helicopter based at Fallon located the private aircraft Sunday on Mount Grant. Pilot Dan Denninburg, 60, of San Diego, was flying alone from Red Bluff, Calif., to St. George, Utah, when his twin-engine plane crashed, killing him.