12 Die as Army Helicopter Crashes, Burns in Carolina

An Army UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training mission crashed in a wooded area Wednesday and burst into flames, trapping and killing the 12 soldiers on board, a base spokesman said.

The Black Hawk, carrying a crew of four and eight paratroopers, crashed near a parachute drop zone at the western edge of the base.

“We can confirm there are 12 deceased service members. There are no survivors,” said Maj. Thomas Hogan, a Ft. Bragg spokesman. “They were all in the helicopter when they died.”

Flying in Formation

An Army spokeswoman in Washington said the helicopter crashed when flying between 75 feet and 100 feet above ground in formation with two other helicopters.

“They were flying in formation and the helicopter just nose-dived. There was no explosion and it didn’t run into anything. It just went down and caught fire. We don’t know why,” said spokeswoman Elaine Henrion.

Military police sealed off the crash site and medical personnel removed the bodies from the burning craft.

The Army has 555 Black Hawks and the aircraft, built by the Sikorsky Co. of Stratford, Conn., has a good safety record, the Army said.

‘A Darn Good Bird’

“You look at the percentages there and that’s a heckuva good safety record for five years. Mechanically there hasn’t been anything consistently wrong pop up,” said Maj. Robert Mirelson. “We think it’s a darn good bird.”

Officials said the training exercise was designed to teach soldiers the proper way to enter and exit helicopters quickly.

“We know it was involved in a routine training mission,” Hogan said. “This was an air mobile exercise, which involves helicopters’ coming in and extracting soldiers from one area and depositing them in another area.”

Sgt. Maj. Arnold Fisher, a base spokesman, called the deaths “extremely unfortunate but part of the price we have to pay for freedom.”