Services set for three National Guardsmen killed in copter crash

Funerals will be held this week and early next week for the three National Guard soldiers who died when their helicopter went down in a snowy Stearns County field last week, even as investigators continued to search for the cause of the crash.

Over the weekend, the Guard held a service in central Texas for Chief Warrant Officer 2 Charles P. Nord, Chief Warrant Officer 2 James A. Rogers Jr., and Sgt. Kort M. Plantenberg. Now they will be buried back home.

A prayer service will be held at 3 p.m. Sunday for Nord, 30, of Perham, at Perham High School, according to the St. Cloud Times. His funeral will be held at 11 a.m. on Monday, with visitation from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday and 9 to 10 a.m. on Monday at the high school, according to the newspaper.

Services for Rogers, 28, of Winsted, are set for 1 p.m. Sunday at Howard Lake-Waverly-Winsted High School in Howard Lake, with visitation from 4 to 9 p.m. Saturday at Chilson Funeral Home in Winsted, according to the funeral home's website.

Visitation for Plantenberg, 28, of Avon, will be from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursday at St. John's Abbey Church in Collegeville, followed by a Mass of Christian Burial, according to an online obituary.

The UH-60 Black Hawk they were flying in on Thursday disappeared just after 2 p.m., after taking off from the Army Aviation Flight Facility near the St. Cloud airport for what officials said was a routine maintenance flight.

But emergency radio transmissions show that a mayday call went out nine minutes into the flight, sending authorities scrambling to locate the missing chopper.

A State Patrol helicopter equipped with thermal-imaging cameras eventually found the wreckage, about 16 miles southwest of St. Cloud.

All three were assigned to Company C, 2-211th General Support Aviation Battalion, out of St. Cloud. They had returned in May from a nine-month deployment to the Middle East.

Libor Jany • 612-673-4064