[buzzcat]

Your views appreciated!

[Uglywhiteguy]

Having flown in both, I think both would be bad on any crash dummy in a test...but the Chinook has tires that may be of some help and a stronger body...so I vote against the Huey....

[Texaggie79]

General Interest
6 minutes

[There's millions of'em]

Well, to properly answer your question one would need to be rated in both. Assuming one has plenty of altitude and therefore time to react and set up the landing, the Huey was actually fun to autorotate. Engine loss on take off is a bummer. Hydraulic failure and engine loss would ruin your entire day.

[DallasMike]

I worked for Bell Helicopter in the 1980s and they prided themselves on the auto-rotation capabilities of their ships. I have no personal experience and no desire to try it myself, but it was interesting to watch them run through the tests when new models were being rolled out.

[AzJP]

I hate to split hairs, but either can auto-rotate and either could be survivable after "simple" engine failures.
However, the Chinook cousin I was familiar with in 'Nam fell like a rock 'cause the engines quit when a round exploded a transmission and the rotors failed to autorotate for some mechanical reason.
If, IF you could find one pilot with equal skills in both ships (forget the one vs two engine Bell problem) I have no idea which he/she would choose.
Sorry.
P.S. I once flew often with a Hughes 300 pilot who could autorotate into a landing smoother than kissing a babies cheek. In a OH-6A he was a deadweight P.O.S. Which leads me to believe that pilot skills would make more of a difference than airframe.
Sorry I can't give you a better answer, but us fixed wing pukes have been known to be brick-dumb about fling wings.

Fixed wings are for those pilots who can't do more than one thing at a time.

[drjoe]

Of course the fuel tanks run along the sides and bottom of the Sh*t-hook and are rather liable to rupture in the event of a hard landing at the end of an auto-rotation. And of course the problem with dual engine A/C is that there are twice as many things to go wrong and if one engine goes you are not guaranteed a safe landing on the one that remains. This is as true with rotor winged as fixed wing A/C. Take your pick - me? - I'll stay on the ground.

[Pylot]

I am pretty sure the Chinook version flown by the Army in Nam never received an airworthiness certificate.

If you were ever in one, the leaking hydraulic lines along the inside of the body did not inspire confidence.

Properly executed, an auto rotation can be a smooth, if not firm, landing. Improperly executed it is called a crash.

[TADSLOS]

The short answer. It depends. The UH-1H is single engine. If you lose it during cruise flight, you have to autorotate to survive. The CH-47 has two engines and dual engine failures are rare. Even with a single engine failure, you could have serious problems, depending on your gross weight, airspeed, attitude and altitude. I have autorotated Hueys to the ground on numerous occasions at varying airspeeds and altitudes. They are generally forgiving as long as you have adequate airspeed and you maintain a steady autorotative state (rotor RPM in the green, a/c in trim and an adequate airspeed (68-93 KIAS) as I recall. The tricky part is near the bottom when you have to determine when to decel and hoping your landing area is as good as it looked at altitude as it does at 50 feet AGL. Keeping the aircraft aligned and the aircraft steady on the skids will keep you from doing an ass over tekettle routine on the ground.

I have no flight experience with the CH-47 but have sat in the jumpseat on many occasions, to include practice autorotations. They felt more like a steep power on approach to me, but I'm sure it's a completely different feeling behind the controls. I can tell you that the AH-64A Apache drops like a rock in an autorotative descent. Apache crews practice single engine failures at an out of ground effect (OGE) hover extensivley because that is the flight profile they are in the most(during battle position opns). It's a tricky airspeed over altitude manuever that requires a cool head and some finesse at the controls to complete the manuever within standards. It's a real hoot to do under the Night Vision System.

[Piquaboy]

Being a former aircraft mechanic in the military, I always considered helicopters as a bunch of nuts and bolts flying in close formation.