Monday March 5 5:23 PM ET
Guardsmen's Remains Recovered From Georgia Crash

UNADILLA, Ga. (Reuters) - The remains of 21 National Guard soldiers and airmen killed when their transport plane crashed during a weekend rainstorm were recovered on Monday from a muddy field in central Georgia, officials said.

Military crews, hampered over the past two days by knee-deep mud in the newly plowed field, also prepared to begin removing charred wreckage of the C-23 Sherpa turboprop, which went down on Saturday, killing everyone on board.

``The remains recovery has been completed. Tomorrow they should start on the wreckage removal,'' John Birdsong, a Robins Air Force Base spokesman, said from the crash site, near Unadilla, about 100 miles south of Atlanta.

The square-bodied, C-23 Sherpa transport plane, with a crew of three airmen from the Florida Army National Guard, crashed as it was ferrying 18 Virginia Air National Guard troops back to the Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia.

The bodies of the victims were taken to Robins Air Force Base, about 45 miles north of the crash site, and were to be flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Tuesday, weather permitting. A major snowstorm was sweeping through Delaware and the U.S. Northeast.

The troops, members of the 203rd Red Horse Squadron, based at Camp Pendleton in Virginia Beach, Virginia, were returning from a two-week training mission when their plane went down.

Witnesses said they heard the plane, which is used by the Army National Guard to haul cargo and can be configured to hold up to 30 passengers, sputtering just before it hit the ground and burst into flames.

In Virginia, military officials were working out plans for a memorial service for the air guardsman killed in the crash.

About 75 soldiers were sent to the scene of the crash, cordoning it off and using all-terrain vehicles to reach the wreckage. Heavy equipment, including front-end loaders and flatbed trucks, was brought in from the Robins air base to remove the wreckage.

Army investigators from Fort Rucker, Alabama, expected to complete their investigation of the crash site later this week. The Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, the home of Army aviation, typically heads up investigations into crashes of Army aircraft.

Crews on Sunday recovered the airplane's flight-data recorders, which preserve cockpit conversations and data on speed and altitude, among other things. The instruments will be examined for clues to the cause of the crash.

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