DRAPER — The joy — two groups of Utah National Guard troops are coming home this week after one-year deployments overseas. The pain — two combat-tested Utah Guard pilots, James Linder and Clayton Barnes, died Monday night, already close to home, when their Apache helicopter crashed during training near Fairfield.
"This is a huge loss for us," Utah Guard commander Maj. Gen. Brian Tarbet said Tuesday. "It will be tempered only slightly by the safe return of those who have served with distinction in Iraq (and Afghanistan) — we get them home, we hope, Thursday late morning."
One group of fellow guardsmen coming home is Alpha Company, 2nd Battalion, 211th Aviation, which includes about 40 Utahns who have been serving the past year in Iraq.
The other group is 1st Corps Artillery, with more than 100 Utah soldiers who since June 2006 have been training Afghanistan's soldiers to take over security of their own country. Last November the unit lost one of its members, 2nd Lt. Scott Lundell, 35, of West Valley City, who died during a firefight in Afghanistan.
And now the helicopter crash, so close to home, with no way to put a "happy" face on it, Tarbet said.
The pilots were both veterans of Operation Enduring Freedom and had served in Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, 211th Aviation, in 2004-05.
Sgt. Jill Stevens, who this year was crowned Miss Utah, served as a medic with the pilots in Afghanistan and got a call early Tuesday morning about their deaths. Stevens confirmed the names of the two pilots, Linder and Barnes, on Tuesday night.
"It's still settling in," Stevens said over the phone. "At first, it was unbelievable, I'm dreaming."
She described both men as "quite hilarious," remembering how Barnes' nickname was Buddha.
One of the pilots, Linder, was so devoted to aviation that he ran a business that dealt in model helicopters, which included Apaches.
The cause of Monday's crash will be investigated by a team coming from the U.S. Army Aviation Safety Center at Fort Rucker in Alabama.
"We're just in a watch and wait mode until we find out what happened here," Tarbet said. "We're going to be very cautious and conservative and approach this very gingerly."
As part of standard procedure after a crash, all of the Utah Army Guard's AH-64 Apaches and Blackhawk helicopters have been indefinitely grounded. The grounding, however, does not impact the Utah Air National Guard.
The mid-career pilots, both Utahns who served a combined 21 years in the Guard, leave behind "young" wives and "young" children, Tarbet said.
"This is a punch in the gut today, there's no question about that," Tarbet said from inside the Guard's headquarters in Draper. "We're receiving two units home this week, and that usually is cause for great celebration in this building. We're always thrilled to get our soldiers back, and it's cast a pall on that, as it should."
Monday's crash occurred sometime around 8 p.m., when the two pilots were already overdue to land in West Jordan. Guardsmen searched for and found the helicopter in familiar mountainous territory known as Cedar Valley, west of Utah Lake, where Lt. Col. Scott Robinson said the pilots have flown hundreds of times.
"I wish I had a dime for every time I've flown up and down Cedar Valley," said Robinson, who was battalion commander when the two pilots were in Afghanistan. "It's our common training area."
A medical helicopter responded to the crash site, but both men were declared dead at the scene. Weather does not appear to have been a factor in the crash, which showed no signs of an explosion or fire. Guard officials said there was apparently no distress call from the pilots prior to the crash.
The Guard's "tight-knit" bunch of aviators was in mourning Tuesday for their "brothers," Tarbet said. "We'll work through this, it's a challenging time."
Tarbet visited the crash site, which he called sacred ground. "It's just a difficult thing to see," he said. "This is a war plane. I see them typically sitting on the ramp in West Jordan — they have a certain majesty and power to them, and that's not there at this point. It's a sad and somber place.
"It's an irony that these fine pilots can fly in the arduous circumstances of Afghanistan in mountains approaching 20,000 feet in thin air. It's just ironic that we lose them here."
But Robinson said that even in the best of times, flying Apaches is still "dangerous business."
There have been injuries in other crashes of helicopters piloted by Utah Guard aviators, but the most recent deaths occurred all the way back in 1985, when a Utah Guard helicopter crashed in California, killing two crew members.
Throughout the Army, the $30 million AH-64 Apache helicopter has logged over 2.3 million flight hours since it became fully operational in 1986. In that time there have been 37 accidental fatalities and 79 aircraft destroyed due to an accident, according to Army spokesman Maj. Tom McCuin in Virginia.
Over 650 Apache helicopters are currently in use by the Army. McCuin said via e-mail that modernization efforts of the Apache began in 1995 and continue and that the upgraded versions of the Apache should be around for the next 20 to 30 years. Over 140 Apaches are currently deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
As for accidents, the Army puts Apache mishaps into three categories, depending on the dollar amount of damage and the number of injuries or fatalities involved. Since 1986 there have been 345 AH-64 Apache accidents, with 246 of those believed to have been caused by human error and 83 "suspected or known to involve material failure."
When an Apache is armed, it carries ammunition for a 30mm cannon, 2.75-inch rockets and Hellfire missiles. However, the Apache that crashed Monday was not armed, Utah Guard spokesman Maj. Hank McIntire said.
Guard commander in chief Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. on Tuesday afternoon issued a statement, saying he and first lady Mary Kaye Huntsman were "saddened" by the loss and that they wished to extend their deepest sympathies to the families of the two pilots.
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com