Seven Marines and four soldiers aboard an Army Black Hawk chopper that crashed in waters off Florida during a night training mission were presumed dead Wednesday, officials said.
Some human remains have washed ashore, an Eglin Air Force Base spokesman told the Washington Post.
The Army National Guard UH-60 was reported missing about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday. Searchers found debris about 2 a.m. Wednesday, spokesman Andy Bourland said.
“We have confirmed that we have had some human remains wash ashore in the area where our search and rescue team have begun a larger-scale operation,” he told the paper.
Two UH-60s assigned to the 1-244th Assault Helicopter Battalion in Hammond, Louisiana, were participating in the overnight exercise involving the Marine Special Operations Regiment, the Eglin base said in a statement. The Marines were assigned to Camp LeJeune, North Carolina.
The second helicopter and the personnel on board have been accounted for.
Bourland said the helicopter that crashed took off from a nearby airport in Destin and joined other aircraft in the exercise.
“Whatever the trouble was with the one aircraft, it did not involve the second helicopter that was participating in the exercise,” Bourland told CNN.
The names of the Marines and crew members were withheld pending notification of next of kin.
Dense fog created low visibility Wednesday morning and the area was under a fog advisory. It was unclear what conditions were like at the time of the accident.
The training area includes 20 miles of beachfront that has been controlled by the military since before World War II. Military police keep a close watch on the area and have been known to run off private vendors who rent jet skis or paddle boards without permission.
Test range manager Glenn Barndollar told the Associated Press in August that the beach provides an ideal training area for special-ops units from all branches of the military.
The UH-60 Black Hawk was introduced into Army service in 1979, as a successor to the UH-1 Huey, the ubiquitous workhorse during the Vietnam War.
The Black Hawk’s crew comprises two pilots and two crew chiefs, and can carry an entire 11-man infantry squad.
On Oct. 3, 1993, two Black Hawks were shot down in Somalia in the Battle of Mogadishu — commonly known by the title of a movie about it, “Black Hawk Down” — which left 18 Americans killed and 73 wounded.
