FORT DRUM, N.Y. (AP) -- The military confirmed Wednesday that 11 of the 13 soldiers aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that crashed during training died when the helicopter went down in a remote, wooded area of a base in northern New York.
One of the two survivors was in critical condition Wednesday, and the other was in serious condition, a Fort Drum spokesman said.
The soldiers had just completed a ``sling loading'' exercise, loading and unloading equipment from a sling beneath the helicopter, and were on their way back to Wheeler-Sack Airfield when the helicopter crashed Tuesday afternoon about three miles from the field, said Lt. Col. Bryan Hilferty.
Crews aboard two other helicopters flying in the same training formation did not see the crash, Hilferty said.
``They came back here and that's when they noticed the trail helicopter was missing,'' Hilferty said.
All 13 soldiers aboard the helicopter were active members of the 10th Mountain Division. The four crew members were from the division's Aviation Brigade. The infantrymen were from the Second Brigade.
Hilferty said officials would not release any of the victims' names until all the families had been contacted. ``Our focus is the families now,'' Hilferty said.
The accident is being investigated by a team from the Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., and personnel from the Criminal Investigation Command, Hilferty said. The military's criminal investigation unit reviews all accidents at military facilities, he said.
Investigators stayed at the scene through the night. On Wednesday, heavy snow was falling, making their work more difficult.
Hilferty said there were no indication of problems before the crash.
``The first call I got was that it was missing. It just disappeared,'' Hilferty said.
``The Black Hawk is a great helicopter. It is the workhorse of the Army. It has a great safety record,'' Hilferty said.
Maj. Daniel Bohr at Fort Drum said the aircraft last made radio contact shortly before 2 p.m. Rescue crews located the crash site at about 3:30 p.m.
Hilferty said search crews were slowed getting to the scene by several feet of ice-covered snow in the crash area. The crash occurred about 150 yards from a dirt road, he said.
Hazel Seery said she was driving home from work about 2 p.m. when she saw two Army helicopters. After living in the area for 33 years, she has become accustomed to the training flights, but this one was different.
``There was one on the bottom and another helicopter flying on top of it. The one on the bottom's nose was up and the one on the top was tipping down,'' Seery said.
``I didn't see the crash but I knew something was up with all the commotion outside,'' she said.
The National Weather Service reported winds of 22 mph with gusts up to 30 mph at Wheeler-Sack field around 2 p.m. Steve Burton, a pilot with the air taxi service Adirondack Helicopters Inc. in Remsen, 60 miles south of the post, said there was nothing troubling about Tuesday's weather.
``Visibility is good,'' he said. ``There's some wind but nothing we're not used to coping with this time of year.''
Fort Drum, situated along the eastern shore of Lake Ontario about 70 miles northeast of Syracuse, is home to the 10th Mountain Division and has been a major staging area for reserve units taking part in the build-up toward war with Iraq. Nearly 1,000 division soldiers and reservists have left from Fort Drum in recent weeks.
The training mission had no connection with ongoing war exercises at the base, Hilferty said.
Black Hawk UH-60 helicopters are widely used transport aircraft. They are equipped with advanced avionics and electronics, such as global positioning systems.
Last month, a Black Hawk crashed during night training in the Kuwaiti desert, killing all four crew members. The Kuwaiti military said sandstorms were reported in the area at the time the chopper went down.
On Jan. 30, an MH-60, an adapted version of the Black Hawk, crashed during training near Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, killing four members of an elite aviation regiment.
