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‘Copter down! Copter down!’ Reporter on scene in Mosul

Jan-14-2006 » Filed Under: TF Band of Brothers

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NICK WADHAMS; The Associated Press

MOSUL, Iraq – By the time the two pilots were removed, the helicopter was little more than a tangled mass of wire and shredded metal. The cockpit was upside down, the seat belts dangling and bloody. Nearby lay a muscled action figure with Velcro taped to its feet – a trinket from inside the aircraft.

The U.S. Army reconnaissance helicopter crashed in a muddy trash-strewn clearing in central Mosul after coming under small-arms fire Friday. It was the second fatal helicopter crash in Iraq in less than a week....

“They weren’t conscious,” said Staff Sgt. Joel Burger, of Fort Wainwright, Alaska, one of the first soldiers to arrive. “These guys were pretty beat up.”

One witness said he heard machine-gun fire before the helicopter crashed, and children told soldiers that the sound of gunfire came from three or four directions and that the helicopter was flying erratically, possibly trying to evade it.

The pilot might have tried to land it in the dirt clearing, about 20 feet from some mud huts with clothes hanging along lines.

The armed helicopter was on a combat air patrol just outside Forward Operating Base Courage when it went down 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, the military said.

Knight Ridder Newspapers’ senior military correspondant Joseph L. Galloway was on patrol with troops in Mosul who responded to the crash scene. ...


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