The Chinook that crashed in Bosnia. What do we know about the accident that killed four Italians serving with EUFOR?

In the late afternoon of Thursday 29 October, an Italian Army CH-47F Chinook transport helicopter, attached to the 1st ‘Antares’ Regiment of the Army Aviation Command (Aves) in Viterbo and deployed as part of the European operation EUFOR Althea, crashed in Gorice, a village of a few hundred inhabitants in the Brčko district, in north-eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina, close to the River Sava and the border with Croatia. There were fifteen people on board, all Italian: four died and eleven were injured. According to the mission command, it was a routine training exercise.

The incident occurred during take-off from Brčko airport or immediately afterwards, according to Italy’s ambassador to Sarajevo, Sarah Eti Castellani, who arrived at the scene in the evening. The Chinook had taken off on Wednesday morning from Viterbo and, after a stopover at Pratica di Mare, had reached Bosnia. It crashed in an uninhabited area, but not far from the first houses in the village: no civilians were involved and there was no damage to buildings or vehicles. A large quantity of kerosene spilled from the fuel tanks, so much so that the fire brigade remained on site to monitor the wreckage throughout the night. The fuselage broke into three sections and the recovery of the bodies was a lengthy and complicated process.

The first reports came from Bosnian media outlets, starting with the Klix news portal, which quoted the district mayor, Siniša Milić. For a few hours, the death toll fluctuated: local sources reported three people killed instantly and twelve injured, one of whom was in a critical condition and later died in hospital. Shortly before 9.00 pm, EUFOR confirmed that the helicopter involved was an Italian Chinook; later that evening, the Ministry of Defence put the death toll at four and the number of injured at eleven, who were admitted to hospitals in Brčko and Tuzla; none of them – as Minister Guido Crosetto assured – were in a life-threatening condition. Rome immediately sent a team of military doctors. Today, Brčko is observing a day of mourning, with flags at half-mast.

Two of the victims were members of the Army, and two were members of the Italian Red Cross Volunteer Military Corps. The names were released by Minister Guido Crosetto – who is currently in Bosnia with the Chief of the Defence Staff – on social media, late in the evening: the ministry waited until the families had been notified, he explained, to spare the hundreds of families of military personnel serving in Bosnia hours of anguish.

Sergeant Simone Ruggia, aged 30, originally from Salerno, was the pilot. He had been serving with Aves in Viterbo for at least eight years; he is survived by his fiancée, his parents and a sister.

Sergeant Claudio Marchesi, aged 35, was the on-board specialist. Originally from Orvieto, where his family lives, he had moved to Viterbo three years ago; he is survived by his parents, a brother and a sister. The mayor of Orvieto, Roberta Tardani, has expressed the town’s condolences.

Lieutenant Franco Adriano Zecchillo, of the Italian Red Cross Volunteer Military Corps, was a doctor from Milan specialising in cardiocirculatory pathophysiology and cardiovascular perfusion. Tomorrow, 31 October, he would have turned 65.

Sergeant Laura Procacci, also a member of the Italian Red Cross Volunteer Military Corps, was the youngest: aged 24, she grew up in Montegrosso, a hamlet of Andria, and was a medical student in Rome. It was her first international mission, and she had been the first female non-commissioned officer from Andria to be sworn in to the Italian Red Cross Military Corps. 

The eleven injured are being treated in hospitals in Brčko and Tuzla, where the Ministry of Defence has sent Italian military medical personnel. “None of the injured are in a life-threatening condition,” said Crosetto. 

Several videos of the incident filmed by residents and shared on social media, as well as eyewitness accounts gathered by the Bosnian media, have emerged. The footage shows the large twin-rotor helicopter rising about ten metres, spinning round several times and spiralling downwards until it crashed. Witnesses describe a helicopter flying low, making several turns and emitting loud metallic clangs; a motorist from Brčko initially believed his own car had broken down, and noted that the Chinook had flown over almost the entire town before crashing outside the built-up area. Mayor Milić confirmed the low-altitude flight and the spinning motion in the moments leading up to the crash.

Two details are considered significant. Weather conditions were normal, with good visibility, and bad weather has been ruled out. Furthermore, the aircraft was found with its landing gear extended, suggesting that the crew attempted an emergency landing.

Officially, the causes are ‘under investigation’. Eufor has announced a thorough investigation and the Ministry of Defence has launched its own enquiries. For the time being, there are three theories on the table.

The most widely accepted explanation is that of a technical fault, described as almost certain by military sources quoted by Corriere della Sera. The manoeuvre captured in the videos – a spin around the vertical axis – is consistent with a problem affecting one of the two rotors or the transmission that synchronises them: in the Chinook, the two tandem rotors rotate in opposite directions and balance each other out; if one loses thrust, the balance is lost and the helicopter tends to spin round its own axis. A Bosnian aviation expert, Omer Kulić, interviewed by Klix, also rules out human error: in his view, it is clear that the pilot tried to react, but at that stage there was nothing he could do. Take-off, he points out, is the most delicate moment of any flight. The second hypothesis, which has been circulating since early this evening, is that the helicopter struck high-voltage power lines immediately after take-off. The third hypothesis – human error – has not been formally ruled out, but at present no one is putting forward this theory.

This process will take some time: the eleven survivors will need to be interviewed, and the black boxes and wreckage will need to be recovered and analysed. In Rome, officials are indicating that days will be required merely for the initial findings; a full reconstruction will take weeks, possibly months.

For Viterbo, this is not the first tragedy linked to a Chinook. On 30 March 1980, at Abu Dhabi airport, an Army Aviation CH-47 involved in the ‘Ghibli’ mission – which was intended to demonstrate the twin-rotor helicopter’s performance in the heat and sand of the desert – struck a hangar with the blades of its rear rotor during a demonstration flight at extremely low altitude. The helicopter overturned and caught fire: ten military personnel died – six instantly and four over the following two days from their burns – along with three Agusta technicians. With thirteen fatalities, it remains the most serious disaster in the history of the Aves, and in Viterbo the names of the fallen are read out every year.

The Balkans, too, have already seen Italian aircrew lose their lives. On 7 January 1992, a Yugoslav MiG shot down an Army helicopter in Croatia whilst it was on a mission for the European ceasefire observers: four Italians and one Frenchman were killed. On 3 September of the same year, two missiles struck the Italian Air Force’s G-222 ‘Lyra 34’ in Bosnia, which was carrying aid to besieged Sarajevo: all four crew members were killed. This was not the first air accident linked to international missions in Bosnia. In June 2008, four EUFOR personnel – two German officers and two Spanish pilots – died when a Spanish helicopter crashed in a mountainous area near Travnik. A few months earlier, in January of the same year, a Macedonian Mi-17 bringing home soldiers returning from the mission crashed near Skopje: eleven people were killed. And in September 1997, a helicopter crashed into a mountain, killing twelve people, including the German diplomat Gerd Wagner, one of the country’s most senior international representatives.

Condolences have been expressed by the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella; the Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni; the Foreign Minister, Antonio Tajani; and opposition leaders, starting with the Secretary of the PD, Elly Schlein. Crosetto spoke of a grief that no words can ease and announced that the tragedy will alter the programme for National Unity and Armed Forces Day on 4 November: the ‘Villaggio Difesa’ at the Circus Maximus, which was due to be inaugurated today, will not open as a celebration but as a place where people can leave a flower, a note or a prayer for the four fallen soldiers. This morning, the minister departed for Bosnia with the Chief of the Defence Staff, General Luciano Portolano, and a team of specialist military doctors to visit the wounded and meet the contingent.

Eufor Althea (Eufor stands for European Union Force; Althea is the name of the operation) has been active since December 2004, when the European Union took over from NATO the stabilisation force deployed following the 1992–1995 war. Its task is to support the implementation of the military aspects of the Dayton Accords and to ensure a secure environment; it comprises around 1,100 military personnel from some twenty countries. Since 21 January this year, it has been under Italian command: it is led by Major General Maurizio Fronda, the third Italian to head the operation. The national contingent also includes doctors and nurses from the Red Cross Military Volunteer Corps.

The incident comes on the eve of a political deadline. Today in New York, the Security Council is holding its biannual debate on Bosnia and Herzegovina and will vote on the renewal for a further year of the mandate for EUFOR Althea, which is due to expire in early November. The draft resolution, prepared by the United Kingdom, is a ‘technical’ renewal, with no changes to the mandate, and was formally put to the vote on Tuesday. Greece currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council.

The renewal of the mission has for years been the only area of agreement between the West and Russia regarding Bosnia: last year, Resolution 2795 was passed unanimously, including by Moscow. The dispute centres instead on the Office of the High Representative, which Russia opposes and would like to see closed. In 2021, Moscow threatened to veto the renewal of EUFOR if the text mentioned the High Representative, and since then the second annual debate has been held without the High Representative taking part. This year the situation has changed: Germany’s Christian Schmidt resigned in the spring and, since 1 July, the post has been held on an interim basis by the American Louis Crishock, whilst the countries of the Peace Implementation Council have yet to reach agreement on a successor. Crishock, incidentally, was the international supervisor for the Brčko District until July.

There is nothing to suggest that the crash will alter the outcome of the vote, which everyone unanimously expects. But the session will inevitably also serve as a tribute. For Rome, which has made the Althea command in Bosnia one of its key commitments in the Balkans, the issue now is a different one: to quickly understand why a Chinook that took off for a routine training exercise turned into a death trap.