Captain Rebecca Lobach smiles in the cockpit of a Black Hawk UH-60 helicopter, February 28, 2024.
Samantha Brown
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Samantha Brown
The army published the name of the third crew member of the Black Hawk helicopter which struck an affiliated flight to American Airlines over the Potomac river this week, killing 67 people.
Captain Rebecca Lobach was 28 years old and from Durham, North Carolina, she was a distinguished military graduate from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill and commanded in 2019 as an aviation officer in active service.
She died with her other head warrant officer and pilot Andrew Eaves, 39, from Great Mills, Md. And Sergeant-Chief Ryan O’Hara crew, 28, from Lilburn, GA.
Initially, his family asked the army to refuse their name by requesting intimacy. Such a decision is unusual in such accidents or fighting deaths.
Lobach had 500 hours of flight, considered normal, while the stars had 1,000 hours, deemed experienced.
The best friend of Lobach, the first lieutenant Samantha Brown, an artillery soldier in active service, described it as a brilliant, devoted and ferocious competition.
Brown said that she was going to March 12 miles with a 45 -pound pack, at a faster rate than the norm for infantry soldiers. Lobach hoped to pilot her Hawk Black at some point on a fighting of combat and dreaming of a doctor to become a doctor.
The three soldiers were on a training flight outside very Belvoir, Virginia, just south of Washington, at the time of the accident.
In a prepared statement, the Lobach family said: “We are devastated by the loss of our beloved Rebecca. She was a brilliant star in all our lives. She was kind, generous, brilliant, funny, ambitious and strong. no longer dreamed of or worked harder to achieve its goals.
Reduced margin for error
“The initial indications suggest that this may have been a periodic control or evaluation by an experienced instructor pilot of a less experienced pilot,” said Brad Bowman, military analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a former pilot Black Hawk which after 9/11 attacks stole a very Belvoir on the same routes
“A control, as opposed to a normal training flight, creates a unique dynamic in the cockpit. In a control, the less experienced pilot can be nervous and eager not to make mistakes, while the pilot of the Instructor look to see how the other driver responds to the various developments, “said Bowman. “Sometimes an instructor pilot will test the aviator less experienced to see how they react, but such a technique would have been unusual and not recommended in this place given the reduced margin.”
The plane is supposed to maintain a height of 200 feet, but the officials who were not allowed to speak publicly of the investigation told NPR that the Black Hawk may have had more than 100 feet more.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth admitted that there may be a problem of altitude with the Black Hawk.
The officials said that the Tour of Reagan National Airport had alerted the Black Hawk for the presence of American Eagle Flight 5342 twice: once two minutes before the accident, only the second only 12 seconds before the impact .
The investigators recovered the black boxes from the two planes and always recover the bodies.
The FAA has limited all helicopter traffic along the road to Medevacs and VIP Flights.
Diversity disinformation
The Hawk Black accident inaugurated a wave of disinformation of social media by focusing on diversity, inclusion and equity, or Dei. The Trump administration, whose Hegseth, is committed to eliminating diversity efforts through the government.
There were allegations that the pilot was a transgender pilot of the Virginia National Guard named Jo Ellis. Ellis published a video “proof of life” on Facebook, denouncing rumors and offering condolences to those who were killed in the accident.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, D-ill., Herself, a former Black Hawk pilot, told NPR that she had understood why the family initially refused to make the name of their beloved audience.
“We should respect the wishes of the family at a time when they suffered an incredible loss,” said Duckworth. “I think it is a perfectly legitimate request that the family would make. And I am happy that the army honors this request.”
Duckworth condemned online speculation on the third member of the crew and in particular the reflections of President Trump that the army crew was to blame. Speaking Thursday at the White House Information Room, the president said: “I have helicopters. You can stop a helicopter very quickly. Not the right turn, of course.”
“Each of these troops that was on this plane won its place there, and it is the most trained military airmen in the world,” said Duckworth about Trump’s comments. “And I am just sick in my stomach that we would have a president who would say such things on the heroic men and women who serve every day. “”
