Showed the video to my daughter (former Blackhawk pilot) and son-in-law (crew chief) and they both felt he must have lost part of the rotor. I, who have no expertise whatsoever, thought the same thing when I saw it. GD
I have no logged time in a Blackhawk and 1000 hours in a Huey. We transitioned from the Huey to the Blackhawk in the 90's in the Iowa Guard. In the early stages of the airframe, the sink elevator which is controlled by the SAS system and a computer would put the sink elevator into the approach/landing mode with no input from the pilot. That is when it got the reputation as the "crashhawk" or the "lawn dart". To the best of my knowledge they got that worked out real early in the development. We are talking A models in the late 1970's and early 80's.
I did a Blackhawk maintenance school at Indian Town Gap in 2001. Those main rotor hubs are poured, forged and machined titanium and have a very good history of being hell for stout. The pins that hold the blades to the main rotor hub are also pretty stout along with the blade grips. The rotor hubs also have droop stops to keep a blade from coming down and cutting off the tail boom. Something catastrophic had to of happened. I hope we find out soon. I'm sure the birds will all be grounded and inspections due as soon as they figure out what the issue is.
kwg
