Black Hawk down: Helicopter crashes in Gaza killing 2 Israeli soldiers

JERUSALEM – On the 341st day of the Swords of Iron war, Gaza continued to exact an intolerable toll on the Israel’s military, following a Black Hawk helicopter crash in the Philadelphi Corridor/Rafah area, in which two soldiers – including the lead pilot – are known to have died.

According to an initial probe into the accident – the army has already confirmed the helicopter did not come under enemy fire – the craft struck the ground instead of touching down as it would normally do. This fact implies two things; the helicopter was both flying at low speed and did not fall from too significant a height.

In spite of this, the Black Hawk was destroyed, leaving two dead, and eight wounded – four critically and four others with more moderate injuries. The combat engineer, whose serious wounding in contact with the Hamas enemy precipitated the helicopter’s flight, was one of those subsequently taken for medical evaluation.

The soldiers who were killed were named by the Israel Defense Forces as Sgt. Maj. (res.) Daniel Alloush, 37, from Tel Aviv, and Sgt. Maj. (res.) Tom Ish-Shalom, 38, from Nes Harim.

Both served in the IAF’s elite search and rescue Unit 669.

IDF UH-60 Blackhawk medevac from the Gaza Strip pic.twitter.com/YKZ5WSaULm

— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) November 13, 2023

At 12:32 a.m., a Black Hawk helicopter – known in Hebrew as Yanshuf – from the 123rd Helicopter Squadron, carrying soldiers from the 669 Rescue Unit, arrived to urgently evacuate a combat engineer who had been severely wounded by terrorist gunfire in the Gaza Strip and needed immediate hospital transport. Service personnel wounded in the Strip are routinely airlifted to Israel’s hospitals, and the site of Black Hawks criss-crossing Israel’s skies is a common one. Those soldiers are often airlifted to Soroka in the southern city of Beersheba, although others are treated at various hospitals in the country’s center, including Tel Aviv.

Air Force Commander Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar ordered the formation of a team to investigate the accident. He also instructed training flights for the Black Hawk fleet to be grounded, although operational flights, such as those to evacuate wounded soldiers will continue without interruption.

This is the first operational incident to occur to the Black Hawk, which has been in service since the mid-1990s. In this war alone the fleet has conducted hundreds of flights in and around the Gaza Strip, and has evacuated some 1,800 wounded soldiers from the field of battle.

The Black Hawk helicopter was famously used to evacuate rescued hostages from their Gaza captivity, including Noa Argamani in June, and most recently Bedouin Arab Qaid Farhan al-Qadi, in late August.

Overnight, an Israeli Air Force “Yanshuf” helicopter, which was on a mission to evacuate an injured soldier to a hospital for medical treatment, crashed while landing in the Rafah area in the Gaza Strip.
An initial inquiry conducted indicates that the crash was not caused by…

— Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) September 11, 2024

One of Israel’s worst ever military disasters involved two helicopters. On Feb. 4, 1997, two transport helicopters ferrying Israeli soldiers into the “security zone” in southern Lebanon collided in mid-air, killing all 73 military personnel on board.

In bad weather, including fog, the helicopters were forced to hover over the borderline as the pilots waited for permission to cross over into Lebanon. Three minutes following that confirmation, the helicopters crashed into each other, leaving an indelible mark – and countless families bereaved – which nearly 30 years later is a wound still to fully heal.