The military helicopter that crashed off northern Israel’s coast on Monday night, killing two pilots, disappeared suddenly and without warning, an Israeli Air Force officer said.
The helicopter crashed off Haifa’s coast on Monday night during a training flight. The aircraft’s wo pilots died in the accident, and a naval officer who was also onboard survived.
Israel Defense Forces search-and-rescue teams including the military’s elite helicopter-borne Unit 669, the Israeli Navy’s elite Flotilla 13 commando unit and the Yaltam scuba unit responded to the scene.
IAF Brig. Gen. Amir Lazar said the pilots were recovered from the cockpit after the helicopter sank beneath the waves in a complex recovery operation carried out in darkness. First responders attempted life-saving resuscitation efforts but were unable to revive the pilots, who had suffered from severe hypothermia.
The two were later named as Lt.-Col. Erez Sachyani and Major Chel Fogel. Their families have been notified, the IDF said in a statement.
“No call was heard on the radio before the accident. It disappeared from the monitoring screen and there was a report of a helicopter that hit the water and it activated all systems and rescue forces,” Lazar told reporters in a phone briefing in the predawn hours of Tuesday morning.
Lt.-Col. Erez Sachyani (right) and Major Chel Fogel, who were killed in a helicopter crash on January 3, 2022 (IDF Spokesperson)
There were no recordings of a distress call after the crash.
“The helicopter was underwater and the rescue went on for a long time. The pilots were finally recovered by divers. The helicopter has a floating mechanism that can activate. We don’t know if it was activated, but the helicopter went underwater,” Lazar said.
Lazar said the helicopter had hit the water on the way back from a training flight and that the two pilots were “very experienced.”
“This is a difficult and painful accident. These helicopters are well-used but very reliable and operate consistently with the navy. The technical components will be carefully investigated,” he said.
An Israeli army flare illuminates the sky during searches after a military helicopter crashed off the coast of Haifa on the night of January 3, 2021. (Alon Nadav/Flash90)
Lazar said the pilots did not extricate themselves from the doomed aircraft but the naval officer who survived managed to escape and was rescued by maritime police.
The surviving officer was transported to Rambam Medical Center in Haifa while fully conscious. A hospital official said he suffered light bone injuries and received urgent care for hypothermia. He was in “very stable” condition, the official said.
The military closed off the coastline near where the crash happened and dozens of soldiers scoured the area, looking for fragments of the helicopter. Pieces of the helicopter began washing onto shore soon after the crash.
The helicopter went down in the Mediterranean Sea just off the port city of Haifa. The crash happened close enough to the coast for city residents to see flames from the shore and call it in to police. Rescue forces pulled the surviving officer from the water about 1.5 kilometers (nearly one mile) offshore.
Washed up parts of a military helicopter lie on the ground after it crashed off the coast of Haifa on the night of January 3, 2021. (Alon Nadav/Flash90)
Israeli Air Force chief Amikam Norkin grounded all helicopters of the type that crashed, halted all air force training flights and appointed a team to investigate the crash.
The specific cause of the crash was not immediately known, but it appeared to be the result of a technical malfunction, not an attack.
Video footage taken just after the crash, which was quickly shared on social media, showed flaming wreckage not far off the coast.
In one video, it appeared that the helicopter caught fire before hitting the water. A bystander can be heard in the video saying, “A meteor is coming down.”
— Local Focus – Security Alerts (@LocalFocus1) January 3, 2022
The helicopter that crashed was a Eurocopter AS565 Panther, known by the IAF as an “Atalef,” or bat. The aircraft is used primarily for missions at sea as it is capable of landing on Israeli Navy missile ships, specifically Sa’ar-5 class models.