Two Fort Campbell, Kentucky soldiers were killed Wednesday evening when a AH-64E Apache helicopter crashed during a routine training flight in a rural area in Tennessee about 12 miles south of the base, Army officials said early Thursday.
Officials did not release the names of the soldiers because their families had not yet been notified. The accident is under investigation.
The crashed occurred at about 7 p.m., officials said. Army officials did not start monitoring the situation until 8:05 p.m., a Fort Campbell spokesman told local media.
Fort Campbell is home of the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagles" -- the Army's only Air Assault Division, according to the Military.com base guide. The installation is located on the Kentucky-Tennessee border.
The base is also home to the Army's 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne), also known as Night Stalkers, which fly such helicopters as the CH-47 Chinook,UH-60 Black Hawk, and assault and attack configurations of the MH-6 Little Bird.
The accident is the latest in the string of at least three Army helicopter training crashes in the last 11 days. On November 23, two Army pilots were killed when their Apache crashed during training in South Korea. And on November 24, four crew members were killed near Fort Hood, Texas when the UH-60L Black Hawk they were flying crashed. Both accidents are under investigation.
--Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com.
