It was supposed to have been a routine operation - a night air assault mission — which 25th Infantry Division soldiers had just performed a week earlier.
But as Brig. Gen. William Caldwell, division operations officer, pointed out today “everything we do is complex” and Monday’s air assault turned into tragedy, killing six soldiers and hospitalizing four others.
Last week, the division had moved more than 800 soldiers 15 miles from Schofield Barracks to a landing zone in the Kahuku Military Training Area a few miles off Sunset Beach without any incident.
“We used the same aircraft,” Caldwell, “the same air crews and the same location. Both would have been done at night.”
On Monday night, 800 soldiers were going to repeat the night maneuver as division prepared to end its annual two-weeklong “Lightning Thrust Warrior” exercise. It is designed to prepare one of the two brigades stationed at Schofield Barracks for its May deployment to the Joint Readiness Training Center at Folk Polk.
The night was clear with winds just under 15 knots. Showers in the Koolaus over the LZ “X-Strip” were light to moderate.
The Black Hawks carrying the division’s infantry soldiers were grouped in fours. By 7:40 p.m. Monday night two flights of eight Black Hawks had made the 12-minute journey and deposited their cargo of soldiers and equipment.
Eighty to 100 soldiers and cargo and equipment, including artillery pieces, had been safely transported up to that point.
Caldwell, who was in the air monitoring Monday’s operation, said the accident occurred when two Black Hawks — 660 feet shy of the LZ “X-Strip” and about 100 feet off the ground — slowed down for a landing.
The Black Hawk carrying a sling load of what was supposed to simulated a 8,000 pound cargo of ammunition and another one with a 7,500 pound Humvee dangling below it ran into trouble.
Caldwell won’t say if a collision occurred although one witness sitting in the helicopter carrying the ammunition told the Star-Bulletin he felt his aircraft being hit.
Six of the dead Schofield soldiers were either crew members or passengers on the Black Hawk transporting the Humvee. Killed were Maj. Robert Olson, who was the 2nd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery Regiment’s operations officer and his humvee driver Specialist Rafael Olvera-Rodriguez.
Also killed in the mishap were two pilots — Chief Warrant Officer George Perry and Chief Warrant Officer George Montgomery —and two crew members — Sgt. Thomas Barber and Specialist Bob MacDonald.
All four belonged to the 25th Infantry Division’s (Light) 25th Aviation Regiment.
Today, as the media toured the crash site from the air the humvee lay on its back with its wheels in the air near the downed Black Hawk. Still littered around the crash site were even the soldiers’ weapons.
Caldwell said the area was kept intact at the request of investigators from the U.S. Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala. The wreckage of the two Black Hawks are expected to remain in the remote Kahuku site until next week when they will be transferred to a hanger at Wheeler Army Airfield for further investigation.
An initial accident report to Maj. Gen. James Dubik, the 25th’s commanding general, is expected to be completed within three weeks.
Caldwell said the ammunition-carrying Black Hawk, with a crew of four and seven other soldiers, made what he described as “a controlled crash,” landing on its belly in a dirt gulch.
But Caldwell said that is what a Black Hawk pilot is supposed to do in an emergency and that the aircraft’s seats are designed to break away to give passengers ease in leaving the aircraft.
The other Black Hawk, which had carried the Humvee and which had no survivors, lay more than 250 feet to the east. Neither aircraft were damaged by fire.
Although Monday’s accident was the Army’s worst training accident in Hawaii, Caldwell and other Army officials said this was the first major fatality involving a Black Hawk since it was brought into the 25th Division’s arsenal in 1985.
Forty-one Black Hawks are maintained by the division’s 2nd Battalion, 25th Aviation Regiment.
Flags across the state were flown at half-staff today for the victims of the helicopter accident.
Caldwell noted: “Military operations in peace and war are dangerous. We saw that last night ... It’s tough. What it does is that it brings home to you the fact what each and every soldier does for his country. They understand that there is apparent risk involved in anything we do even in any of our training.
“It makes you realize that everybody is susceptible ... It brings home how dangerous our business can be.” |
