FORT BRAGG, N.C. -- An Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training missioncrashed into woods at Fort Bragg Wednesday and burst into flames, trapping and killing the 12 soldiers on board.
The Black Hawk, carrying a crew of four and eight paratroopers, plunged into a wooded area near a drop zone at the western edge of the base at about 12:30 p.m. EST, officials said.
'We can confirm there are 12 deceased service members. There are no survivors,' said Maj. Thomas Hogan, a Fort Bragg spokesman. 'They were all in the helicopter when they died.'
An Army spokeswoman in Washington said the helicopter crashed while flying between 75 feet and 100 feet above ground in formation with two other helicopters.
'They were flying in formation and the helicopter just nosedived. 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 crash was the second in less than three weeks involving a Black Hawk, the 22nd since the helicopter was introduced in 1981 to replace the UH-1 Huey of the Vietnam War.
A spokesman said the Army has 555 Black Hawks and the aircraft, built by the Sikorsky Co., of Stratford, Conn., has a good safety record.
'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.'
'We're training to go into combat and win and if you don't have realistic training you're not going to be able to do that,' Fisher said.
Officials said Army investigators were looking for witnesses to the crash.
'There's a thirst for information on our part. Any time there's a death in the Army family, we ask why? We've got to sit down and talk to anybody who possibly saw it. This is a time consuming process,' Hogan said.
The Army's Flight Safety Investigation Team is looking into another Black Hawk crash Feb. 26 at Fort Campbell, Ky. Capt. Louis Baggett said four crewmen were injured in that crash and one is still hospitalized.
Baggett said the helicopter crashed on the military reservation while on a routine training flight.
'We can't speculate about the cause of the crash because it's still under investigation,' he said.
The investigation team, based at Fort Rucker, Ala., is expected to issue a report on the crash sometime this month, Baggett said.
