Nine soldiers were killed in a crash of two medical evacuation Black Hawk helicopters during a routine nighttime training mission over Kentucky, the US Army said on Thursday, in one of the military’s deadliest training accidents in recent years.
Crew members using night-vision goggles were flying two HH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, operated by the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, when the aircraft crashed in a field late on Wednesday over Kentucky’s Trigg County.Army Brigadier General John Lubas, the division’s deputy commanding officer for operations, said little was known so far about why the helicopters came down and he acknowledged he was not even sure whether they crashed into each other.
Lubas said an aircraft safety investigations team from Fort Rucker in Alabama would arrive later on Thursday to review data from onboard computers, which he said were similar to the black boxes in commercial aircraft.
