Posted on 02/16/2023 4:30:14 AM PST by cll
There are no survivors after a military helicopter carrying two people on a routine training mission crashed onto an Alabama highway Wednesday, officials said.
The Black Hawk aircraft crashed around 3 p.m. near Highway 53 and Burwell Road in Harvest, about 10 miles northeast of Huntsville, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency said.
The helicopter caught fire upon impact, and both passengers died, military officials said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Until Valhalla, brothers.
Prayers to all concerned.
Woke maintenance?
went down like a stone... no auto rotate, no nuthin
Poor souls. My friend flew hueys and refused to fly the blackhawks, everyone called them lawn darts.
Black Hawks are fine machines. When everything works.
I passed through there a couple days ago while visiting a friend who used to fly copters and now lives near there. We were talking about helicopters and how he did a lot of high elevation flights in afghanistan and how scary they were compared to normal.
They were from the TN National Guard.
Yea, I saw that. I meant to say were they operating out of Rucker. Crews from all units used to go there for training.
It’s possible although the TN Army Aviation Support Facility is closer to Huntsville than is Rucker. Probably from the 230th Cav. I am checking.
Nothing routine about catastrophic mechanical failure or crashing a Blackhawk and dying.
Terrible for the people on board.
A friend of mine didn’t have a father because he died in a helicopter crash in Vietnam.
Another guy I knew died in an older Soviet-era helicopter.
It seems like those things are inherently dangerous.
I much prefer the linear flight patterns of fixed wing aircraft. You take off from the ground at speed, fly in mostly a straight line, and gracefully land on a runway. If you understand how lift works, you feel safe on an airplane. It's logical how it stays up in the air.
Helicopters just don't make sense to me.
A lot more fragil and less armor than a jet, Remember the Lowest bider makes them. And we know they don’t use the best of anything.
"Now with 100% more chinese metal!"
No crew chief? That is an essential set of eyes to watch out for power lines and other dangerous problems.
If you know about the lift of a fixed wing, then you understand rotary wing. Instead of speeding down a runway to generate lift, you move the wings. Same principles involved, just operated differently.
I agree with you but when there are no passengers or other mission that requires them, Army crews frequently fly without a back seater.
1. Eye-Witness accounts of any and all events are notoriously unreliable. Great for a news soundbite, worthless for a crash investigation. It’s a disservice to the public to even put them on the air.
2. Most people don’t have a clue how/why fixed-wing fly. Only a small fraction of those who do understand rotor-wing aircraft.
3. Fuel cells in military (combat) helicopters are self-sealing (against small arms fire) and designed to withstand impacts that are beyond human endurance. So if the fuel cell failed on impact, that speaks to an impact that probably was unsurvivable.
You would have to be pretty creative to dream up a scenario in which an aircraft in clear weather and under controlled flight would impact the ground with enough force to rupture the fuel bladder.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.