FAIRHOPE, Alabama—With a deep fog settling over Mobile Bay this morning, rescue efforts intensified for three missing crew members of the Coast Guard helicopter that crashed Tuesday night a couple miles southwest of Point Clear. 

“The search continues for the three missing crew members and the salvage continues as well,” Petty Officer 2^nd Class Bill Colclough told The Fairhope Courier this morning. “The multiagency search-and-rescue efforts continue for these three missing crew members.”

A dive team from the Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team San Diego and helicopters and crews from New Orleans and Florida, as well as the Mobile-based Coast Guard Cutter Stingray, and numerous other vessels and aircraft, are now participating in the search for the three crew members, who have been missing since their aircraft went down in the bay at about 8 p.m. Tuesday.

The Coast Guard released the names of the crew members shortly before noon today. Deceased is Chief Petty Officer Fernando Jorge. Petty Officer 3^rd Class Andrew Knight, Lt. j.g. Thomas Cameron and Lt. Cmdr. Dale Taylor remained missing as of press time.

“Overnight, a crew aboard the Ben R. Johnson, a 57-foot salvage vessel, recovered the helicopter fuselage from the bottom of Mobile Bay,” the Thursday morning release stated. “The fuselage did not contain the bodies of the three missing crew members.”

The search has been ongoing since Tuesday when communications with the crew of the MH-65C were lost during a training flight over Mobile Bay. Rescue crews who arrived immediately on scene recovered Jorge who was later declared dead, according to the Coast Guard.

The following  were involved in the search when this was posted March 1: the 87-foot Cutter Stingray, homeported in Mobile; two MH-65C Dolphin helicopters and crews from Coast Guard Air Station New Orleans; one MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter and crew from Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Fla.; two 26-foot Trailerable Aids-to-Navigation Boats and crews from Coast Guard Section Mobile; Coast Guard Gulf Strike Team; Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team San Diego dive team; Alabama Marine Resources; and Mobile County Sheriff’s Office.

The cause of the incident is under investigation.

Colclough said just before noon that salvage efforts continue, with an analysis to begin of materials salvaged to determine the cause of the accident and to assist in rescue efforts.

On the western side of the bay, the Mobile County Sheriff’s Office and its flotilla of search-and-rescue vessels have worked around the clock since the accident Tuesday. On Wednesday morning at Fowl River Marina, Capt. Jay Howard briefed the six-man team before they rejoined the search.

“The debris field is pushing west toward this side of the bay,” Howard told two deputies, who would be leaving shortly in an airboat, that vessel’s first involvement in the search. “Check the reefs. And I would go all the way to Dauphin Island Bridge.”

Those two officers had been on the water since Tuesday night and had just returned to shore and changed into dry clothes before heading out again.

“We used Rescue One last night. That’s a sonar boat,” Howard told The Courier, pointing to the vessel docked next to the airboat. “We sonared the area and put a diver down. We will put the airboat in the water in a few minutes to search the shore.”

By 7:35 a.m. Wednesday, that airboat manned with two officers left Fowl Marina to join the search.

Four hours earlier on the eastern side of the bay at the Mullet Point public boat launch, where much of the rescue efforts had been staged, a local television news crew stood by, looking out at the lights moving on the bay. They had been there since 9 p.m. Tuesday.

“There are at least two dozen boats out there,” the WKRG Channel 5 cameraman said. “We’ve been watching that helicopter you see now make steady sweeps between what we think is the crash site and the debris field. You can hear its engine now as it turns back north.”

He said rescue efforts from several Baldwin County fire departments and law enforcement agencies had been on the water since they got there and had recently returned.

The only other person at Mullet Point at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday was a man sitting by himself at the end of the dock.

“I’m a friend of some of the crewmembers,” he said. “This is a sad situation, but I have hope