First Helicopter Crashes
Five dead in Thai helicopter crash
FIVE army officers have been killed when their military helicopter crashed in western Thailand.
The helicopter came down in mountainous terrain in Kaeng Krachen National Park near the Burmese border in bad weather yesterday, Lieutenant General Udomdej Sitabutr said.
The helicopter was on its way to pick up officials dispatched to the country's largest national park on July 11 to arrest suspected illegal loggers.
Soldiers had been sent to recover the bodies, the military said.
These soldiers left in order to go and recover bodies of the arm officers hoping to find their friends alive.. however..
Nine found dead in second Thai helicopter crashes attempting to retrieve bodies from previous chopper crash
A THAI army helicopter has crashed near the Thai-Burma border, as its nine passengers prepared to retrieve five bodies from the wreckage of a chopper that crashed in the same location last week.
The Nation newspaper said the nine passengers included army officials and a television cameraman. It reported the aircraft had crashed in Burma about two kilometres over the border.
Lt Gen Udomdet insisted that the UH-60 Black Hawk that crashed was a new aircraft and despite its high performance extreme winds could still have brought it down.
Maj Gen Tawan was quoted as making a grim joke with a group of members of the press who wanted to travel with him on the helicopter to cover the corpse retrieval operation.
"You cannot come with us otherwise we will all die if this helicopter crashes," he said.
About half an hour after taking off at about 11am yesterday, the pilots of the helicopter lost contact with their fellow soldiers waiting at the temporary helicopter landing ground.
The five soldiers' bodies from Saturday's crash remain on Tanaosi mountain in Kaeng Krachan National Park in Phetchaburi after being recovered from the crash site and carried about a kilometre to the Ton Nam Petch forestry base.
Soldiers waiting on the ground with the bodies of the five soldiers killed in Saturday's crash heard a loud explosion shortly after they saw the Black Hawk plummet from the sky.
Udomdej said the crash scattered the helicopter's fragments in the mountainous Kaeng Krajan National Park, but there was no explosion. Wind shear was the likely cause.
He said Myanmar soldiers helped in the search, Thai army spokesman Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd told AFP that a search operation began this morning with soldiers approaching the area on foot.
The Black Hawk crew had set out Tuesday to recover the bodies of five soldiers who died in a helicopter crash in the remote area Saturday.
A THIRD Thai Army helicopter has crashed, bringing the death toll from the three incidents to 17.
Three men were killed and a fourth injured yesterday in the third crash in little over a week, a military spokesman confirmed to the Bangkok Post.
The Bell 212 chopper - part of the rescue mission following another helicopter crash on Tuesday - went down in Phetchaburi province, southwest of the capital Bangkok, AFP reported.
"There were two pilots and two army technicians on board. One was injured and three were killed," Colonel Sunsern Kaewkumnerd said, adding that the cause of the crash was not yet clear.
Thai television news channels showed aerial shots of the flaming wreckage, in the same jungle-heavy province that witnessed the previous tragedies.
The aircraft, which was travelling from Bangkok to a task force base in Phetchaburi, had on Saturday transported seven bodies from a Black Hawk helicopter crash on Tuesday.
Nine people - eight military personnel and a TV cameraman - were killed in that chopper crash, as it flew to the site of an earlier crash on July 16, in which five died. Outgoing premier Abhisit Vejjajiva said the two tragedies had a "great impact" on army morale.
Following the third accident yesterday morning, army chief General Prayut Chan-O-Cha said that air missions came with added risk, but insisted safety had been a priority.
"The first two accidents were caused by bad weather and the third one we presume was an engine problem, but we will wait for an investigation," he said on Channel 3.
They were all young and brave, I hope they all RIP and may their families be proud to know their son, father, brother, uncle and friend died while on duty and they are a hero.

Help














