06 February 2010

US Army UH-60 Crashes on Training Flight in Germany

I can't believe I've been so busy this week that I missed this news story:

FRANKFURT -- The U.S. Army says a helicopter that crashed in western Germany, killing three soldiers, was on a training mission. It is still investigating the incident.

The UH-60 Black Hawk crashed Wednesday night around 6:45 p.m. (1745GMT), killing its three-member crew.

The helicopter was en route to Coleman Army Airfield in Mannheim when it went down in a thick patch of woods near the A67 highway.

No one on the ground was injured.

The U.S. Army said in a statement Thursday that the names of the soldiers killed were being withheld until their relatives could be notified.



Update: ArmyAirCrews.com has the names of the crewmembers.


It's kind of a sad but necessary tradition among Army aviators that we compulsively check Army Air Crews.com whenever we hear of an aircraft accident. The community is so small, that in many cases you'll know the victims of the crashes. I didn't know any of the crewmembers in this case, but it's tragic just the same.


I was told in flight school that, if we held a 10-year class reunion, at least one of us will have died in a helicopter crash. I didn't believe it at the time, but unfortunately, it turned out to be true less than a few months after we graduated, with not one, but two of my classmates perishing in a horrible accident near Mosul, Iraq.


My heart goes out to the families of the Soldiers.

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