Four killed in crash of Black Hawk copter during Kuwait training exercise

CAMP UDAIRI, Kuwait — Troops at Camp Udairi sadly continued training Tuesday following the crash of a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter that killed four crew members based in Europe.

News leaked out after morning chow, hanging heavy over troops who had been in high spirits even as they face the prospect of war with Iraq.

“The jokes kind of stopped this morning,” said Chief Warrant Officer German Sanchez, 33, of the 6th Squadron, 6th Cavalry Regiment from Illesheim, Germany.

The Pentagon identified those killed Tuesday as Spc. Rodrigo Gonzalez-Garza, 26, of Texas; Chief Warrant Officer Timothy W. Moehling, 35, of Florida; Chief Warrant Officer John D. Smith, 32, of Nevada; and Spc. William J. Tracy, 27, of New Hampshire. A memorial service will be held for them Wednesday at Camp Udairi.

According to The Associated Press, the helicopter was part of the 158th Aviation Regiment, 5th Battalion, of the 12th Aviation Brigade based in Giebelstadt, Germany. The group is attached to V Corps’ 11th Attack Helicopter Regiment.

The Black Hawk was one of two flying in formation when it crashed at 12:30 a.m., said Lt. Col. Glenn Barr, deputy commander of Task Force 11th Aviation, the Kuwait unit to which the crew was attached.

The crash occurred in windy, dusty conditions with a low cloud ceiling near Camp New Jersey, about eight miles south of Camp Udairi and 30 miles northwest of Kuwait City.

“One Chalk [the other flight crew] saw a bright flash from ground level and concluded there had been a crash,” Barr said. The pilots issued no distress call beforehand.

Emergency units were dispatched from a nearby base and found the wreckage about an hour after the crash. There was no sign of survivors.

The unit commander and safety officer were awakened immediately, Barr said.

The commander drove to the scene while the safety officer secured Camp Udairi’s control tower according to a preset plan.

The bodies were recovered later that morning and taken to Camp Doha in Kuwait City. Several soldiers from the 2nd Squadron, 6th Aviation Regiment, an Illesheim-based unit now serving at Camp Udairi, were detailed to guard the crash site.

Barr said the flight crew was practicing the use of night-vision goggles in a desert environment. The goggles amplify existing light into an eerie green glow that lets pilots see in the dark. They are crucial to flying at night, and all pilots keep current in their training.

“It is a perishable skill,” he said. “It’s not like riding a bike.”

Flying with the goggles is challenging, Barr said, because the field of vision is much narrower than the 180 degrees or more a pilot can see during the daytime. Clouds and dust can reduce the available light.

“It requires a lot more scanning, a lot more crew coordination,” he said.

Barr did not know the status of the investigation. But he said typically in serious accidents, there are two: a safety investigation conducted by the Army Safety Center in Fort Rucker, Ala., to determine the cause, and a commander’s inquiry — usually conducted by an officer from outside the unit — to apportion responsibility.

The crash stunned the small, close-knit community of Army aviators who had been enjoying something of a reunion at Camp Udairi because of the large number of them currently assigned there.

For now, they have dropped the good-natured rivalry between the hard-charging Apache attack pilots and the more laid-back Black Hawk lift crews.

“It doesn’t matter if you know them or not,” said Chief Warrant Officer Mike Wade, an Apache pilot and safety officer for the 2nd Squadron, who had friends in the unit. “It’s a brotherhood.”

“Even if it’s not your unit, you know someone there,” Sanchez said.

Although helicopters are statistically safe, pilots agreed the threat of sudden death flies with them. They don’t dwell on it, but each crash drives the reality home.

“You’re more cognizant of the risk, but you don’t really change anything,” said Chief Warrant Officer 2 Bjorn Johnson, 36, of the 6th Squadron.

“If you focused on it, you’d never fly again. You’d scare yourself right out of the cockpit.”

It’s not in a pilot’s nature to show fear.

“Aviators typically don’t outwardly show a lot of emotion, but internally they’ll be thinking about it a lot,” said a Germany-based Apache pilot, who requested anonymity. “These are the same guys you see in the chow hall, and they're gone.”

On Jan. 30, a MH-60, an adapted version of the Black Hawk, crashed in a training mission seven miles east of Bagram air base in Afghanistan. Four members of an elite aviation regiment were killed.

The two Illesheim units have experienced fatal crashes in the relatively recent past. A 2nd Squadron pilot died during the Victory Strike II exercise in Poland in October 2001, and two 6th Squadron aviators were killed in a training accident in Albania in 1999.

“You always worry about the guys in your squad,” said another senior Apache pilot who wanted his name withheld. “This place we’re flying is dangerous. I don’t feel good until the last engine is shut down. Then I can relax.”