INSIDE ONE OF THE MOST DEVASTATING MILITARY TRAINING MISSIONS IN RECENT MEMORY
By Kevin Lilley
Seconds after his Black Hawk helicopter took off for a March 10 training mission — filled with seven Marine special operators and three fellow Louisiana Army National Guardsmen — the pilot remarked: “Gee, it’s dark as [expletive].”
Less than five minutes later, after a series of maneuvers and radio transmissions that suggested both helo pilots were disoriented by the lack of visibility, the UH-60M hit the waters of Santa Rosa Sound at an unsurvivable speed.
Everyone on board was killed, marking the single deadliest day for Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command since its creation in 2006.
Marines who’d been expecting to provide maritime support for the exercise would instead pilot their watercraft through a debris field.
The tragedy is that these troops should not have been in the air that day. The crews were warned repeatedly in briefings of the weather restrictions, according to an investigation involving both LAANG and MARSOC personnel. Knowing the restrictions, the helo crews went out on the exercise anyway, the investigation found, noting the soldiers “disobeyed a direct order” by flying that day.
Details about who gave the mission brief instructing the troops not to fly under those conditions were redacted. The Louisiana National Guard declined to discuss the report. But in the wake of the accident, investigators recommended new training procedures and safeguards meant to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future, according to the report.
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