An Army Black Hawk helicopter that went down in woods at Fort Bragg - killing all eight soldiers on board - was flying in clear weather and was not involved in a live-fire exercise.
Military officials would not speculate on why the chopper, a UH-60L, crashed during a photo reconnaissance exercise Tuesday afternoon. They said no other choppers were in the area."You really couldn't tell it was a helicopter," North Raeford assistant fire chief Johnny Baker said of the wreckage. "It was mangled in pieces pretty bad. Just debris everywhere."
Investigators returned to the site Wednesday. Five bodies had been recovered, and the others were believed to be underneath the wreckage, authorities said.
Some of the victims were photographers taking pictures of the area for a future training exercise, Maj. Gary Keck, a spokesman for the 82nd Airborne Division, said Wednesday.
Bryan Donaldson, a guard at a nearby youth center, was driving home from work when he saw smoke billowing from the woods.
"It was a bunch of black smoke, an enormous cloud of black smoke," Donaldson said in Wednesday's editions of the Fayetteville Observer-Times.
He ran to the site but could not get close because of the intense heat.
The victims were members of the 82nd Airborne Division. Their names were withheld until relatives could be notified.
Since 1981, at least 153 Americans have been killed in crashes involving Black Hawks, the News & Observer of Raleigh reported.