Five U.S. soldiers reportedly killed in crash of U.S. military helicopter in Honduras

AP WorldStream via COMTEX ^ | 12-12-02

[Oldeconomybuyer]

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Dec 12, 2002 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- Five U.S. soldiers were killed in a U.S. military helicopter crash in central Honduras, radio quoted police as saying.

The helicopter, a UH-60, crashed Wednesday night on a mountain some 85 miles (140 kilometers) north of Tegucigalpa.

[Oldeconomybuyer]

05:19 PST (AP) -- A police spokesman near the site of the crash, Arnold Espinal Guti Derrez, told Radio HRN on Thursday that the cause of the crash was not known, but that there had been heavy rains in the area over the past three days.

The helicopter departed at 8:14 p.m. from San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city and 110 miles north of Tegucigalpa, the capital, and crashed near the town of Santa Cruz de Yojoa some 20 minutes later. It was headed to the U.S. base in Palmerola in central Honduras.

Espinal said "the bodies of all the helicopter's occupants were recovered earlier this morning. All of them are U.S. military personnel."

[Oldeconomybuyer]

Ping!

[Guillermo]

God Bless our Troops and their families.

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

May God Welcome them Home and comfort their family and friends.

[SouthernHawk]

May the Good Lord Bless them and their families.

What a sad Christmas this will be for their loved ones.

[anatolfz]

Sorry to hear of this.
It's one of these? Or see: here.

[dakine]

Is this part of the "War on Drugs"?

[68-69TonkinGulfYachtClub]

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[Mo1]

Prayers to them and their families

[HiJinx]

Geocities is notorious for not letting you link to their pictures...
Here are a pair of UH-60L Blackhawks at Ft. Campbell, KY, preparing to airlift artillery pieces.

www.dustoff.org also has a lot of good pictures, but they're large in terms of bandwidth.

[HiJinx]

Depends on the unit. We've had troops in S. America for quite some time. Some are involved in assisting local law enforcement in drug interdiction, others are helping maintain stable governments (think Nicaragua), while others are there on humanitarian missions.

I don't know the particulars, but I just found pics of BlackHawk air ambulances at www.dustoff.org...that may be what we lost, although I doubt it.

[MeekOneGOP]

Click on Image to hear “Taps”

[homeschool mama]

Thank you for posting this.

God bless them...and their loved ones.

[occam's chainsaw]

God bless these soldiers and their families.

I spent over a year and a half in Palmerola between '85-'87. We were living in huts, eating MRE's and the showers were in tents. I've heard that they have modern facilities there now and even have swimming pools!

We were not there to support the WOD, there were other things happening at the time.

[lavaroise]

Prayer bump. 5 down, 500 sign up!

[hove]

I wonder what a black hawk with 5 soldiers is doing flying around Honduras? Are the terrorists on our back door step?

[archy]

The helicopter departed at 8:14 p.m. from San Pedro Sula, the second-largest city and 110 miles north of Tegulcigalpa, the capital, and crashed near the town of Santa Cruz de Yojoa some 20 minutes later.

That'd put the crash site right near the Soto Cano air base, where the USARSO medevac flights work out of and where the Honduran Air Force Academy is located.

The daily flight from Charleston AFB to Honduras flies into Soto Cano, too. I guess there'll be a safety board from Rucker visiting shortly....

-archy-/-

[archy]

I wonder what a black hawk with 5 soldiers is doing flying around Honduras?

Most of the US rotary-wing flight activities were run out of Soto Cano, including Medevac, heavy lift CH47 *sh!thook* *Sugarbears* logistics flights [including the recovery by a CH47 of a Hondo Huey that went into a lake back] fuel blivit deliveries and delivery of a crane to La Cieba, and Blackhawk relief flights between Soto Cano and Aguacate following the hurricane that hit Olancho province in '98.

Other helo relief operations in the region included those following the flooding and mudslides that killed some 20,000 people in Maiquetia, Venezuela in 2001 and a deployment to Belize following Hurrican Keith.

Recent counternarcotics flights by the 1/228 Aviation Regiment have included full black-out night patrols over the waters around the Dominican Republic watching for Colombian drug-running *go-fast* boats, CN flights in Trindidad and Tobago, training of Honduran troops supporting US DEA CN missions and rappelling/fastrope training for Honduran CN troops and personnel.

That, plus training flights, gunnery practice for the M60D door gunners, maintenance check flights, log and admin runs, and lots and lots of other taskings keep the rotary-wing birds up quite a bit.

Are the terrorists on our back door step?

Oh yes. Just ask the families of LTC Dave Pickett, CW4 Dan Scott and PFC Ernie Dawson, shot down 02 January 1991 near Lolotique, El Salvador. Dawson and Col. Pickett [commander of the 4/228 Assault Helo Battalion] survived the crash but were then executed on the ground by the rebels/terrorists who had downed their helo.

[archy]

I just found pics of BlackHawk air ambulances at www.dustoff.org...that may be what we lost, although I doubt it.

It was indeed a Blackhawk that went down. I don't know yet if it was a medevac flight or not though. All five crewmen are confirmed dead.

Two pilots, two door gunners and a crew chief is a fairly common crew complement for a UH60. But it could have been on a CasEvac flight.

More info on the December 11th crash *here*. This is not going to be a happy Christmas for five families.

-archy-/-