Posted on: Wednesday, December 1, 2004
3 Schofield soldiers die in Afghanistan plane crash
| • | Map of the area, overview of the plane |
| • | Many casualties arise far from war |
Advertiser Staff and News Services
KABUL, Afghanistan — Three Schofield Barracks soldiers were killed when their plane crashed in snow-covered mountains over the weekend, U.S. military officials announced today following recovery operations.
Three American civilians who were the plane's crew also were killed, the military said. There were no survivors.
The plane, a private transport aircraft contracted by the U.S. Air Force, had been reported missing Saturday. A coalition rescue and recovery team yesterday found the wreckage high in the mountains of Bamiyan Province in central Afghanistan.
All six bodies were recovered, as well as the plane's cockpit voice recorder, the military said. The names of the dead were not disclosed. U.S. military spokeswoman Maj. Stacy Bathrick said the three soldiers were members of the 25th Infantry Division (Light) at Schofield.
Their deaths bring to 12 the number of Schofield soldiers killed in Afghanistan since May. There are about 5,800 25th Division troops are in Afghanistan.
"An investigation will be conducted to determine the cause of the crash. However, at this time, we have no indication this crash was caused by hostile fire," said U.S. military spokesman Maj. Mark McCann.
The plane went down Saturday while en route from the U.S. military base at Bagram to Shinband, in Herat province, said Maj. Gen. Eric Olson, commanding general of Combined Task Force-76.
"The indications we have is that it got into a valley and tried to gain altitude quickly," Olson said. "The pilot apparently recognized that he was not going to be able to gain altitude quickly enough and tried to make a very dramatic turn, didn't make it and crashed into a very narrow valley. The aircraft broke into pieces on the ground."
Searchers found the plane about 10:30 a.m. yesterday in an area southeast of Bamiyan in the heart of the Hindu Kush mountains, said Ghulam Mohammed, a senior police official in Bamiyan.
"They found pieces of the engine and the wheels scattered on top of Baba Mountain," which rises to 16,600 feet and was covered in fresh snow, he said.
The U.S. military announced on Monday that the plane was missing and that search-and-rescue teams were struggling through bad weather to reach the area where they suspected it went down.
The CASA 212 transport plane was operated by Florida-based Presidential Airways and was contracted to the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan, McCann said. The plane is designed to fly in and out of the kind of short, rough air strips used to supply American forces searching remote areas of the country for Taliban and al-Qaida militants.
Accidents have accounted for most of the more than 100 deaths of U.S. service members in Operation Enduring Freedom.
Many have involved helicopters, and the most recent fatality was that of an American airman on Oct. 20 near the Iranian border.
