Nine US soldiers were killed during a training exercise on Wednesday when two US Army Black Hawk helicopters crashed in southwestern Kentucky near the Tennessee border. This is the second crash in two months. Are we keeping our soldiers safe?
Two Black Hawk helicopters collide leaving 9 dead during training exercise
Nine soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, were killed when two HH-60 Black Hawk helicopters crashed around 10 p.m. in Trigg County near the Tennessee border, officials said.
According to a statement from a spokesperson, the helicopters were “flying a multi-ship formation under night vision goggles.” There were five personnel on one helicopter and four on the other.
The identities of the soldiers were not immediately known pending notification of next of kin.
A statement from the base on Facebook said the soldiers were taking part “in a routine training mission when the incident occurred.”
All personnel aboard both aircraft were killed, with no survivors. The helicopters went down in an open field across from a residential area, said Brigadier General John Lubas, deputy commander of the 101st Airborne Division, CNN reported. No additional casualties or injuries on the ground were reported.
The crash occurred in the Trigg County, Kentucky, community of Cadiz, NBC Right Now reported. Fort Campbell is located near the Tennessee border, about 60 miles northwest of Nashville.
Second crash involving Black Hawk helicopter in two months
Last month, during another training exercise, a Black Hawk helicopter crashed along an Alabama Highway, killing two National Guard pilots.
In light of the Kentucky crash, officials said an aircraft safety team from Fort Rucker, Alabama, had been deployed to investigate the crash, ABC News reported.
Brig. Gen. Lubas said the helicopters “have something very similar to the black boxes that we see on the larger aircraft, and we’re hopeful that that will provide quite a bit of information on what occurred.”
How safe are Black Hawk helicopters?
The US Army relies on the Black Hawk helicopter as a critical work vehicle that provides transport, medical evacuations, search and rescue operations, key security, ferrying of visiting senior leaders, and other missions.
Between December 2019 and February 2021, 11 Black Hawk military helicopters crashed worldwide, killing at least 25 people, according to crash data, Baum Hedlund reports.
A report from March 1988 claimed the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter had “the lowest accident rate of any Army helicopter in the first six years of its use,” UPI reported.
