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workhorse helicopter. in september, one crashed at ft. polk, louisiana, killing one of the four soldiers onboard there. >> let's get to david kerley, with us live tonight, as well. and david, investigators on the scene of the wreckage tonight? >> reporter: we expect that they will be and get their first good look at first light tomorrow, david. we know that there was snow on the ground, but weather may not have been a factor. the skies were clear. however, we have learned that this crew was on a maintenance flight. they may have been checking out a recent repair. david? >> david kerley with us, as well. thank you, david. there is also new reporting at this hour after that deadly shooting at the naval shipyard at pearl harbor. a sailor opening fire on three civilian workers, then taking his own life. two of those workers were killed, another wounded. tonight, we have now learned the name of that sailor, and here's abc's kaylee hartung on the scene tonight. >> reporter: tonight, authorities investigating why a u.s. navy sailor opened fire on the historic joint base at pearl harbor.
here in florida but a very difficult and very somber day with this announcement that they have discovered the wreckage of this black hawk helicopter. >> colonel jack there's a lot of sorrow any time there's a loss like this tell me about the black hawk -- we know we've been on black hawks overseas so many times but this is really the workhorse helicopter and this was flying low probably in fog in a special ops training exercise and it's dangerous. >> we have plenty of them thousands of them across all of the services. it is the workhorse, it's been in business in the military for decades, it's a very sophisticated aircraft. many redundant systems, heavily computerized and the pilots aboard this flight have thousands and thousands of hours in this aircraft. but they were doing fairly rigorous and you could say dangerous training, sometimes we forget about the fact that
the roughest terrain in the world. transporting special operations forces on secret missions. kill or capture taliban commanders. nearly a dozen of those troops were flying in a blackhawk, the military's workhorse helicopter. just before 5:00 a.m., they were trying to land, according to one official, when the helicopter crashed, immediately catching fire. this year the military has more than doubled the number of special operations raids. but they are not without risk, especially at night. abc's mike boettcher talked with three pilots. >> i would say the biggest challenges we face are landing in brown-out conditions. at night when there's little to no ambient light from the moon. >> reporter: the military trains its pilots to fly in those brown-out conditions. when the dust kicks up so much, they're virtually blind. >> you have to pick something out on the ground. something you know that's not going to move so you can keep your eyes on it when the dust starts blowing. you know it's not going to move.