OSB...DEAD as fried chick'n...body in US hands...SWEET!

[Bob Barker]

[Marlin]

Did anyone think that the pics of the helo were a bit strange? The tail was very hokey looking, especially the side shot where you can see some SLOPPY welds. Even if it is some kind of special "stealth" copter, being used to avoid all of the radar mounts at the ol'compound, the rear rotor would not be exposed like that. It would be an easy radar ping. I also thought it weird that it was intact and appeared undamaged? This all reeks of conspiracy.

[Riff Raff]

Did anyone think that the pics of the helo were a bit strange? The tail was very hokey looking, especially the side shot where you can see some SLOPPY welds. Even if it is some kind of special "stealth" copter, being used to avoid all of the radar mounts at the ol'compound, the rear rotor would not be exposed like that. It would be an easy radar ping. I also thought it weird that it was intact and appeared undamaged? This all reeks of conspiracy.

The helicopter crashed due to pilot error by not putting the nose of the helicopter "deeper" (nose first) inside the compound interior yard. Of course, the US Military isn't going to admit that there was an error during an elite SEALS mission (thus, they blamed it on mechanical failure, not pilot error). As a result, the pilot didn't clear the rear tail boom of the UH-60 aircraft during his landing approach and it clipped the high concrete fencing and broke the tail section completely off at mid-point just before landing. That's why the rear portion of the tail rotor area was undamaged because the tail boom was broken off at mid-point (not end-point).

It does appear that the tail rotor blades were "encased" in a protective circular shroud. It may or may not be because of stealth, but rather just as a protective measure that the bare ends of the tail rotor blades aren't exposed to catch on things such as wires or tree branches when coming in close quarters. The protective tail rotor shroud encasement would also likely help reduce tail rotor noise and make the overall aircraft somewhat quieter (although not by much).

[Riff Raff]

According to the Wiki page, which may not be accurate, "one of the hovering helicopters stalled, in a vortex created by its own prop wash and the high compound walls. After the helicopter stalled, it "grazed one of the compound's walls", "breaking a rotor". The helicopter "rolled onto its side" during an emergency landing."

The part that remained inside the walls was destroyed by the SEALS before they left.

They were modified Black Hawks.

Mark

Yup, that's all part of the US Government cover-up. Blame it on "a stall", "a vortex", "or prop-wash" (which BTW is all total BS)-- it's still comes down to Pilot Error. More accurately, it was a simple case that the Pilot didn't hover more forward (deeper, nose first) in an effort to clear the tail boom of the aircraft on the surrounding high concrete fencing.

What should of happened is the sister UH-60 Pilot of the accompany helicopter should have hovered adjacent to the first helicopter and acted as an "aerial spotter" and directed the first landing pilot to pull more forward into the interior yard. Consequently, the first pilot would have cleared the rear concrete fencing and not clipped it on his inbound approach.

The SEALS troop personnel rehearsed the invasion over-n-over for months. It appears that the pilots of the UH-60 BlackHawks didn't rehease jack squat or panicked and got stage-fright once the real deal went live. The pilots should have rehearsed the landing also with a mock-up landing environment complete with high surrounding walls, and used the sister pilot of the adjacent UH-60 as an "aerial spotter" for the first pilot. It's all about prior event training and rehearsal, rehearsal, rehearsal, before committing to the real thing.

It was a very expensive lesson learned (UH-60's aren't cheap), and luckily the accident didn't thwart the overall mission; no one got hurt, and a fellow CH-47 Chinook helicopter was able to extract the remaining SEALS and crew from the downed UH-60 BlackHawk. I'm sure the Pilot & Co-Pilot of the crashed UH-60 BlackHawk are no longer assigned to the SEALS unit due to their mistake.