Miami - A salvage crew worked on Friday to extract the wreckage of a US Army helicopter from the bottom of a Florida bay three days after a crash during a training exercise that killed 11 troops.
The UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, carrying seven Marines and four National Guard soldiers, plunged into the Santa Rosa Sound along the Florida Panhandle in foggy conditions on Tuesday night. Officials said they have not determined the cause of the crash.
The recovery of the helicopter, which broke into multiple pieces, includes the use of a salvage barge, with help from military divers. The operation got underway at noon local time and was set to take about eight hours, a US Coast Guard spokeswoman said.
Sonar equipment helped locate the missing helicopter on Wednesday at a depth of about 25 feet (7.6 meters).
The Marines on board were part of a special operations unit from Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. They were conducting training involving “helicopter and boat insertion and extraction” with an experienced Army air crew providing the helicopter support, according to a Marine Corps spokesman.
The four soldiers and the helicopter were part of the Louisiana National Guard assigned to an Army unit based in Hammond, Louisiana.
Officials at nearby Eglin Air Force Base were notified of the crash at around 10 p.m. on Tuesday, according to the base's fire chief. A second helicopter in the exercise had turned back due to the weather and was able to land safely.
Bodies of two of the soldiers have been recovered, a Louisiana National Guard spokesman said, with the other two believed to be in the helicopter wreckage.
The remains of the seven Marines also were recovered, the Pensacola News Journal reported on Thursday, citing military officials.
Reuters