A military contractor’s helicopter crashed while on a training mission in Hawaii on Tuesday, killing all four people on board, the US Navy said.
A 58-foot Sikorsky S-61N helicopter supported a training operation at the Pacific Missile Range on the island of Kauai. Croman Corporationan Oregon-based contractor, the Navy said.
All four people in the helicopter were Croman employees, said Brian Beatty, the company’s chief operating officer. He added that the aircraft was “conducting routine training operations under contract with the US Navy.”
Their identities were not made public by Tuesday evening.
Mr Beatty told Hawaii News Now that something went wrong when the helicopter was trying to drop an object it had lifted out of the water.
Witnesses described how the helicopter suddenly went straight down.
Chris Turner, who owns a boat tour business, said The Honolulu Star-Advertiser that the helicopter was at the north end of the runway, dropping objects, when it made a sudden erratic turn to the right and then quickly nosed into the runway.
“They just fell,” Mr. Turner told The Star-Advertiser. “It was full speed. It was crazy.”
This is stated in the message of the National Transportation Safety Board. social media post that the agency is investigating the crash.
The military conducts missile testing and training at a 2,385-acre base on the west coast of Kauai, the northernmost of the main Hawaiian islands. The naval base has more than 1,000 square miles of underwater range for submarine and surface warfare exercises, as well as 42,000 square miles of airspace.
Death due to air crashes and helicopters is not uncommon in Hawaii. In December 2019 seven people on board tourist helicopter died when the plane crashed on the south side of Kauai. In the same year, more than a dozen people died in Hawaii in other air crashes.
Tuesday’s crash on Kauai was one of several military disasters that took place on Tuesday morning. In Utah, two UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters crashed near the Snowbird resort during an exercise. This was reported by the Utah National Guard.. There were no injuries.