DC Black Hawk Was Secretly Practicing for Worst-Case Scenario in US Before Colliding with Plane

The Black Hawk helicopter that collided with a commercial airliner in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday night was running drills to prepare for a potential doomsday scenario.

The 12th Aviation Battalion, the unit for which the downed UH-60 Black Hawk flew, has a unique mission set that includes evacuating senior officials to secure locations in the event of an attack on the federal government, according to a Friday report from Bloomberg.

The outlet noted that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News in an interview on Friday that the helicopter, based at Davison Army Airfield in Virginia, was involved in a “continuity of government” drill.

The idea was to enable the pilots to “rehearse in ways that would reflect a real world scenario,” although he could not offer more detail to avoid mentioning “anything that’s classified.”

Hegseth also said during a White House briefing on Thursday that the helicopter was “on a routine annual re-training of night flights on a standard corridor for a continuity of government mission” before it collided with an American Airlines plane over the Potomac River, killing 64 passengers and airline crew members plus three Army crew members on the helicopter.

“Some of their mission is to support the Department of Defense if something really bad happens in this area, and we need to move our senior leaders,” Jonathan Koziol, the chief of staff for the Army’s aviation directorate, remarked to reporters on Thursday.

“They do need to be able to understand the environment, the air traffic, the routes, to ensure the safe travel of our senior leaders throughout our government,” he added.

The Defense Department identified the three Army crew members aboard the downed Black Hawk on Friday and Saturday, per the Associated Press.

They were Capt. Rebecca Lobach of Durham, North Carolina; Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Eaves of Great Mills, Maryland; and Staff Sgt. Ryan O’Hara of Lilburn, Georgia.

The Pentagon activated a continuity of government mission on Sept. 11, 2001, according to Reuters.

Bradley Bowman, a former Army aviation officer, flew in the mission on that fateful day.

“The battalion helped transport some senior leaders out of Washington, D.C. to ‘hide sites,’” he told Reuters.

Bowman flew a Black Hawk to transport then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to a secure location and then back to the Pentagon.

But the helipad used to transport senior officials had been destroyed in the attack.

Bowman therefore had to land the Black Hawk on the I-395 highway.

“We just repositioned and landed in the traffic circle of 395, which had been closed by that point,” Bowman said.

The secure sites used by the government include the Raven Rock Mountain Complex, a location in Pennsylvania’s Blue Ridge Mountains that can serve as a command center amid nuclear war.

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