A Black Hawk helicopter has crashed in Alabama, killing two crew members, the Tennessee National Guard said.
“We are deeply saddened by the loss of two Tennessee National Guardsmen and our prayers are with their families during this heartbreaking tragedy,” Brig Gen Warner Ross, Tennessee’s Adjutant General, said in a statement.
“We ask Tennesseans to join us in supporting their families during this time of unthinkable grief.”
According to the statement, two members of the Tennessee National Guard were killed during a flight-training mission. The helicopter crashed on Wednesday afternoon and caught fire.
The Madison County sheriff’s office said there were no injuries to anyone on the ground when the helicopter crashed.
“We have no survivors,” Sheriff's Investigator Brent Patterson said. “We have a crime scene here. We have it taped off.”
The UH-60 helicopter, more widely known as a Black Hawk, crashed in the unincorporated community of Harvest along Alabama Highway 53, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said in a statement.
Harvest is to the north-west of Huntsville, which is home to Nasa’s Marshall Space Flight Centre and the US Army’s Redstone Arsenal.
Local news outlets showed large plumes of black smoke rising from the crash site. Several emergency response vehicles were on scene.
Over the years, a handful of Black Hawk helicopters crashed during training exercises.
In 2022 in Utah, whiteout conditions caused a Black Hawk helicopter pilot during a training exercise to lose sight of where he was trying to land, causing a crash with another helicopter near a Utah ski resort. None of men and women aboard the helicopter or the dozens of skiers nearby at the resort were injured.
In 2021, three Idaho Army National Guard pilots died when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed near Boise during a training flight.
And in 2020, two soldiers were killed and three were injured when their Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training exercise off California's southern coast.
