Mike was serving in Afghanistan as Squadron Commander, 3-4
CAV (AVN). His unit deployed from Schofield Barracks earlier
this year. Even though Mike had earned a Bronze Star and Purple
Heart in combat operations, he was making an even bigger impact
through his example of humanity to his soldiers and more importantly,
to the Afghanis in his AO. Mike went beyond putting his life
on the line: he used his life to help others understand and enjoy
the fruits of liberty that we often take for granted.
His wife (Jeannette Regan, USMA '83) is still on active duty
with the 25th ID. They have three sons.
Tentative plans are for a burial in the West Point cemetery
adjacent to Mike's older brother, Dennis McMahon USMA '76, who
also died while serving on active duty.
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - Search teams have recovered the
bodies of six Americans who died when their
plane crashed high in Afghanistan's snow-covered mountains, U.S.
military officials said Wednesday. "We regret to report
that all six individuals on board the aircraft - the three U.S.
civilian crew members and three U.S. soldiers - were killed in
the crash," said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Mark MacCann.
He said their identities would be released later by the U.S.
Defense Department and Florida-based Presidential Airways, which
had contracted the CASA 112 transport plane to the U.S. Air Force
in Afghanistan.
"An investigation will be conducted to determine the
cause of the crash. However, at this time, we have no indication
this crash was caused by hostile fire," McCann said. The
bodies were found amid the debris of the plane in the Hindu Kush
mountains, southeast of Bamiyan. "They found pieces of the
engine and the wheels scattered on top of Baba Mountain,"
which rises to 5,060 meters (16,600 feet) and was covered in
fresh snow, said Ghulam Mohammed, a senior police official in
Bamiyan. McCann said the plane's flight recorder had been retrieved,
but it was not clear what it showed about the crash. He said
the plane crashed en route to Farah, in western Afghanistan.
However, a senior U.S. general said it was headed for Shindand,
60 miles further north. "The indications we have is that
it got into a valley and tried to gain altitude quickly,"
Maj. Gen. Eric Olson told The Associated Press. "The pilot
apparently recognized that we was not going to be able to gain
altitude quickly enough and tried to make a very dramatic turn,
didn't make it and crashed into a very narrow valley." The
fixed-wing CASA 212 is designed to fly in and out of the kind
of short, rough air strips used to supply American forces deployed
in remote areas of the country to search for Taliban and al-Qaida
militants.
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