NORTH MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — Residents and media outlets were shocked to see a U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) come ashore on a public beach in Cherry Grove, South Carolina Thursday morning.
“This morning Service men and women from the US Navy paid a visit to Cherry Grove to pick up some supplies for their off shore operation that is ongoing just off our cost,” North Myrtle Beach Fire Rescue said in a Facebook post.
LCACs have limited range and are designed to deploy with U.S. Navy well-deck amphibs, like Norfolk-based Harpers Ferry-class USS Carter Hall.
The Hall has lead the search for debris from a downed Chinese spy balloon at a position around six miles southeast of Cherry Grove.
U.S. officials have confirmed to local media outlets that the LCAC landing was related to the search.
The LCAC-86 operated with USS Carter Hall as recently as 2016, according to news outlets.
The arrival of a 180-ton, turbine-powered hovercraft surprised onlookers as the LCAC transited slowly through the surf zone and turned at an angle to the beach.
The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered to Quantico, Virginia, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.
The FBI was alerted to the balloon on February 1, the officials said, because the intelligence community had determined that the balloon had an electronic element to it. By late Sunday -- the day after the balloon was shot down -- agents had arrived at the scene, and the first pieces of recovered evidence arrived at the FBI lab in Quantico on Monday.
There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source declined to provide detail on what specific parts of the balloon contained English writing.
