Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Tennessee NG Helicopter Down Near Huntsville AL - "No survivors"

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.

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

Awesome!

We were down in September for a few days and were watching them. He just started on the Apaches last month.

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.

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

They have all the parts and an accessible debris field. Those are two main elements in accident investigation. They'll figure it out.

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

kwg020, thanks for that detailed explanation. I really appreciate to hear real knowledge from people who know what they're talking about because I'm totally ignorant about this sort of thing. Thanks.

That crash didn't look like a tail rotor failure. It looked more like a total loss of lift and attitude control. GD

When I was a flight medic, my unit went from Hueys to Blackhawks (known as crashhawks) and the Viet Nam era pilots were retiring. I asked to be removed from flight status. It didn’t help that I was in a bird that had a tree strike at Ft Leonard Wood during NoE training, a close call with a Cessna at several 1000’ while pilot was in MOPP gear and a new pilot bounced a Huey off the pad from about 15-20’ up.

Good Times

My first thought was wondering if they were trying to loop it and snapped the blades off f it!

Terrible loss.


Mike

It crashed about a half mile from a buddy’s house. He texted me right after and said he’d heard the crash. He’s a former U2 & F/A-18 pilot & he said it sounded like they tried to pull a bunch of collective before the impact like they were trying to autorotate.

I’m glad to hear there were only two on board, there could have been a lot more deaths. God speed.

You can hear that in the tiktok link

Bet no one has opened that

I opened it. Loud crash.

Ron

Never fly in any aircraft where the wing is moving faster than the fuselage.