Taiwan’s Top Military Commander, 7 Others Dead In Black Hawk Helicopter Crash

Taiwan’s military Chief of Staff Shen Yi-ming and seven others were killed when their U.S. made UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter crashed Thursday morning. The others killed included two major generals, a lieutenant colonel, a captain, a major and two senior master sergeants.

Five people survived the crash including new deputy chief of logistics for general staff Huang Yu-min, deputy chief of general staff for communications Major General Tsao Chin-ping and Military News Agency reporter Chen Ying-ju. Officials said the crash occurred in a mountainous region in the northern part of the island. Their destination was New Taipei county’s Wulai mountain district.

The helicopter took off at 7:54 a.m. local time and 13 minutes later the pilot issued a weather report before the communication with the craft was lost.

Two Black Hawks and about 80 officers were dispatched to the scene, according to Taiwan’s defense ministry. Taiwanese media later released images of rescuers at the crash site.

With a little more than a week to go before the Jan. 11 presidential elections, both candidates responded. Current President Tsai Ing-wen indicated she would cancel her campaign activities for three days to deal with the accident in her capacity as commander-in-chief.

She posted a Facebook post announcing she had directed those involved to “put their full efforts into the search and rescue to ensure all the people were safe”. She added, “I received the notice from the defense minister immediately and was quickly briefed in the presidential palace. The safety of the people is the number one task.”

Her opponent, Kaohsiung mayor Han Kuo-yu, also posted on Facebook that he and his team were “praying with all our hearts for the victims”. He wrote, “I want to express my condolences to the victims again and hope that all of us in the country can pray for them together.”

The cause of the crash was not determined but the three most common peacetime causes are bad weather, a mechanical or electrical failure, and pilot error. It is not believed that the crash was caused by an aggressive move by China who in the past has threatened to force a reunification of what it calls a “wayward province” using its military.

The crashed chopper is one of the UH-60M Black Hawks Taiwan bought from the United States in 2010 and there have been some previous incidents. A February 2018 crash that killed six was blamed on the pilots ignoring warning signals for turbulence. Another Black Hawk made an emergency landing in 2016 when some warning lights flashed on.