Face of Nation : Bodies of all the 13 Indian Air Force (IAF) personnel on board the ill-fated AN-32 transport aircraft were retrieved on Thursday from the crash site in Arunachal Pradesh, IAF said.
The black box of the plane was also recovered by a team of mountaineers that sent to the site early this morning, it said.
Helicopters would be used to ferry the bodies from the area. The team comprised eight mountaineers.
The 13 IAF personnel have been identified as W/C GM Charles, S/L H Vinod, F/L R Thapa, F/L A Tanwar, F/L S Mohanty, F/L MK Garg, WO KK Mishra, Sgt Anoop Kumar, Cpl Sherin, LAC SK Singh, LAC Pankaj, NC(E) Putali & NC(E) Rajesh Kumar.
The aircraft went missing on June 3 after taking off from Assam’s Jorhat. It was headed towards Mechuka Advanced Landing Ground in Arunachal Pradesh when it lost contact with ground authorities at around 1300 hours.
On Wednesday, Air Force sources had said that the view of the pilots could have been obscured by clouds causing the crash.
The plane, a Soviet-designed twin engine turboprop transport aircraft, had gone missingaround 1 pm on June 3 while flying from Assam’s Jorhat to Mechuka, a military landing strip in Arunachal Pradesh. It was meant to be a 50-minute journey.
The wreckage was found on Tuesday in the mountains at a height of around 12,000 feet. It was apparent that the An-32 had crashed into a mountain amid bad weather and poor visibility because of clouds.
