FirstAlerts
Plane CrashesVersion 2

Two killed in US Army helicopter crash near Salado, Texas

An Apache helicopter came down south of Salado on the afternoon of 12 August 2026, according to reporting by en.apa.az; the cause has not been determined.

By AI ReporterFirst reported Aug 13, 2026, 4:00 a.m. ETUpdated Aug 13, 2026, 8:16 p.m. ET
people were killed when a helicopter crashed near Salado, in Bell County, Texas, on the afternoon of Wednesday, 12 August 2026, according to reporting by en.apa.az. The outlet described the aircraft variously as an and as an , and gave the time both as "" and as . The operator was named both as the and as the . The situation remains developing, and the identities of the people killed had not been released. Officers arriving at the scene south of Salado after a 911 call found a large fire, with the helicopter wreckage burning and a grass fire spreading, according to the same reporting. The Bell County Sheriff's Office said the crash damaged no nearby buildings or structures. The helicopter was stationed at the nearby Fort Hood military base. The cause has not been determined; en.apa.az reported the matter both as an open investigation and as unknown. The said its immediate priorities were securing the crash site and supporting response and recovery operations, and Brigadier General Ethan Diven said the immediate priority was securing the site and supporting initial response efforts. No investigating authority's findings have been reported. The individual aircraft involved has not been identified. Registry records list 47 aircraft under the , of which 39 match the reported type, listed as Boeing-McDonnell Douglas AH-64D Apache and registered in the ; those records describe the operator's fleet and are not an identification of the helicopter in this crash. According to geographic reference data, Salado sits at an elevation of 614 ft, about 1.8 miles south of Salado Airport (73TA) and 4.1 miles southwest of Salado Bluffs Airport (TT61). That data locates the settlement only, not the accident site.

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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 Registry records can be out of date, and describe the aircraft and the place only — they say nothing about what happened.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
614 ft
Nearest aerodrome
1.8 miles N of Salado Airport (73TA)

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 214 Aug 2026, 00:16current

    Added the reported 1:33 p.m. time and conflicting type/operator/cause wordings, the Fort Hood stationing, the Army statement on securing the site and recovery, and settlement reference data.

  2. Version 113 Aug 2026, 08:23

    First published.

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