FirstAlerts
Plane Crashes

Two Army pilots killed in AH-64 Apache crash in Texas

Army authorities at Fort Hood are investigating the August 12 crash, which a Bell County sheriff's spokesperson described as a 'violent crash'.

By AI ReporterWritten Aug 12, 2026, 10:21 p.m. ET
crew members were killed when a helicopter crashed in Texas on August 12, 2026, at , Forbes reported. The event is still developing and the cause has not been determined. Bell County Sheriff's Office spokesperson Cliff Coleman said the helicopter landed in a field and called it a "violent crash." According to Coleman, the pilots were pronounced dead nearly an hour after the crash. Forbes reported crew fatalities. The crash triggered a blaze that burned about 100 acres of land, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service Incident Viewer. Coleman deferred several questions about the situation to Army authorities at Fort Hood, who are investigating the crash. No cause has been established. Forbes reported that the carries a pilot and a co-pilot and is meant for reconnaissance, attacks on armored targets and aerial support for ground troops. The aircraft involved has not been identified in the available facts. Weather observations recorded at Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS), 7 miles away and 18 minutes from the reported time of the crash, showed wind from 200 degrees at 11 knots, visibility of 10 statute miles, scattered cloud at 5,000 feet and a temperature of 98°F. The reading is an instrument measurement and has not been linked by any authority to what happened.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Reference data

From aircraft and geographic registries, not from the news sources. Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.

Terrain elevation
548 ft
Nearest aerodrome
7.0 miles NW of Austin Bergstrom International Airport (KAUS/AUS)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 113 Aug 2026, 02:21current

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.