Black Hawk Helicopter Crash Kills All 3 Aboard, Minnesota Governor Says

A Black Hawk helicopter carrying three Army National Guard members crashed on Thursday in Minnesota during a maintenance test flight, killing everyone on board, Gov. Tim Walz said.

Mr. Walz announced the deaths of the three crew members during a news conference on Thursday night near the crash site.

The names of the victims were being withheld until their family members had been notified, according to the governor, who said that as a retired member of the National Guard, he was particularly affected by the news.

“These are brothers in arms,” Mr. Walz said. “It’s a tough time.”

The Minnesota National Guard said it lost contact with the UH-60 Black Hawk around 2:05 p.m. local time after the helicopter took off from St. Cloud, Minn.

Officials said the cause of the accident was under investigation and declined to elaborate on the nature of the maintenance test flight.

A mayday signal came from the helicopter before it went down, Dan Miller, chief deputy of the Stearns County Sheriff’s Office, said during an earlier news conference.

Emergency responders located the wreckage of the missing aircraft in a wooded area near Marty, Minn., south of St. Cloud, the sheriff’s office wrote on Twitter.

“Our first priority is the safety and well-being of our Guardsmen and our thoughts are with our soldiers and their families at this time,” the Minnesota National Guard said in a statement.

Mr. Walz postponed a holiday tree lighting and open house at the governor’s residence in St. Paul after the crash. The governor spent 24 years in the Army National Guard and retired as a command sergeant major in 2005, according to his biography.

The Black Hawk, a workhorse of the United States military, entered its fourth decade of use by the Army this year. The helicopters, which are made by Sikorsky, transported members of the Navy SEALs during the 2011 Pakistan raid that killed Osama bin Laden and have played a part in the search-and-rescue missions after hurricanes in the Southeast.

The aircraft became commonly associated with the movie “Black Hawk Down,” which chronicled the shooting down of an Army helicopter in Somalia in 1993, a raid in which 18 Americans were killed and 75 were wounded.