A Black Hawk went down over northern Alabama and caught fire, local authorities said
FILE PHOTO © US Army Photo / Scott T. Sturkol / Public Affairs Office, Fort McCoy
A US military helicopter identified as a UH-60 Black Hawk crashed on Wednesday afternoon near Huntsville in northern Alabama.
The crash was caught on camera around 3 pm local time. The video shows the helicopter dropping rapidly and then hitting the ground, followed by an explosion and a plume of black smoke.
The Madison County sheriff’s office said the aircraft went down near Highway 53 and Burwell Road, just northwest of Huntsville, and that it caught fire upon impact. The sheriff said he did not know how many people had been on board, but that there were no survivors. Local media reported that six people have been killed.
The Department of Defense has yet to provide any details about the helicopter. Citing “credible sources,” local TV station WAFF reported that it belonged to the National Guard in nearby Tennessee.
A short video of the helicopter crash in Harvest (north of Huntsville) from Savanna Terry pic.twitter.com/v1T5vk4gq5
— James Spann (@spann) February 15, 2023
Madison County is home to the Redstone Arsenal, a US Army facility that also contains an airfield. The base hosts a number of commands as well as NASA’s George C. Marshall Space Flight Center.
🚨#BREAKING: New Security Footage video shows the US Military helicopter losing control and falls out the sky near Huntsville, Alabama before crashing into busy highway sadly no one has survived the deadly crash pic.twitter.com/4Y1qFjcG4H
— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) February 15, 2023
A series of Black Hawk crashes prompted a 2021 congressional inquiry into the helicopter, which first entered service in 1979. The Army argued the UH-60 had “the lowest accident rate of any Army helicopter in the first six years of its use.”
That summer, one of the US Army Black Hawks made a dramatic emergency landing in Romania’s capital, Bucharest.
In 2020, Israel briefly grounded its Black Hawk fleet, following a series of accidents.
