Yeah, that's bad stuff, sorry to hear that. RIP.
My daughter-in-law, and the mother of my grand daughter, is a crew chief on a black hawk for the WV NG. I've never really worried about this sort of thing, but it happens. It'll make me think twice now.
I was just talking to my son about this and he said my DIL heard about it as soon as it happened. She said that they're speculating maybe a tail rotor failure. She said that the "Crash Hawks" have a reputation for that. She also said that her unit just recently got new birds. Their old ones were from the 1990's.
The tail rotors have grip inserts (cones) that have to be torqued over a period of time. During the tail rotor rebuild (phase maintenance) you put in the inserts (cones) that go between the blade grips and the tail rotor hub and they have to be torqued to a specified number (I don't recall the number at this moment) and then after a resting period (usually overnight) they have to be retorqued again. It's a bit drawn out but it's not difficult.
They get retorqued after the first 5 hours of flight time and then retorqued every 100 hours until the next phase (500 hours) when everything comes apart again for inspection. I always thought this was an unusual way of attaching a tail rotor blade but there were several such inserts that were used on the Huey as well with very good results. Is it possible that a blade came off because of improper torque ? (maintenance mistake) Maybe. Big maybe.
I tend to think it was a blade that had a flaw and one of the tail rotor blades came loose or separated and now the tail rotor system is out of balance. I could not tell via the video if the tail rotor gear box and blades were still attached to the bird. Most of the time they completely separate in such a case. I'm sure it will get figured out before too many days pass. Unfortunately, 2 pilots lost their life. The upside is there were no passengers and no crew chief to add to the casualty numbers.
kwg
