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AH-64 Apache Crash - Afghanistan


Radleigh

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What went wrong? Was the speed too high for the pilot to pull up again?

I would imagine that the helicopter had powerful engines so I thought initially it looked odd that the helicopter did not pull up.

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What went wrong? Was the speed too high for the pilot to pull up again?

I would imagine that the helicopter had powerful engines so I thought initially it looked odd that the helicopter did not pull up.

What went wrong was he did something he shouldn't have done and luckily no one was killed.....

It was quite clear that he was showing off and got it wrong......

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There's also not much air at altitude for the blades to gain purchase on. By the sound of the engines he was trying his best to miss the ground, but just couldn't get it to pull up. It's a spectacular way to finish your flying career though, and I wonder how many G they were pulling while the fuselage was spinning round the remaining blades after the initial impact and loss of the tail rotor? :wacko:

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Idiot!
What went wrong was he did something he shouldn't have done and luckily no one was killed.....

It was quite clear that he was showing off and got it wrong......

There's also not much air at altitude for the blades to gain purchase on. By the sound of the engines he was trying his best to miss the ground, but just couldn't get it to pull up. It's a spectacular way to finish your flying career though, and I wonder how many G they were pulling while the fuselage was spinning round the remaining blades after the initial impact and loss of the tail rotor?
suppose that's what you get for showing off!

How can you possibly say that? This sort of off the cuff, ill informed, amateur armchair analysis really gets on my wick. He may well have not been authorised for the initial flyby but who's to say the cause of the accident wasn't technical malfunction, control restriction, pilot incapacitation? It could be all manor of things. Have you examined the wreckage, interviewed the crew, sought technical advice from SME's (subject matter experts), looked at all the other video/camera footage, investigated sabotage/SAFIRE, gathered evidence from the squadron and chain of command? Thought not. Every military accident is thoroughly investigated and everything is considered until ruled out by EVIDENCE.

Having been involved in military aviation for over 20 years I know these things are rarely as simple as the conclusion you have come to by watching some footage on a little screen. Please desist from jumping to conclusions however feel free to comment once you have read the full DoD aircraft mishap report when released.

Edited by Haggis
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How can you possibly say that? This sort of off the cuff, ill informed, amateur armchair analysis really gets on my wick. He may well have not been authorised for the initial flyby but who's to say the cause of the accident wasn't technical malfunction, control restriction, pilot incapacitation? It could be all manor of things. Have you examined the wreckage, interviewed the crew, sought technical advice from SME's (subject matter experts), looked at all the other video/camera footage, investigated sabotage/SAFIRE, gathered evidence from the squadron and chain of command? Thought not. Every military accident is thoroughly investigated and everything is considered until ruled out by EVIDENCE.

Having been involved in military aviation for over 20 years I know these things are rarely as simple as the conclusion you have come to by watching some footage on a little screen. Please desist from jumping to conclusions however feel free to comment once you have read the full DoD aircraft mishap report when released.

This sort of arrogant post gets on my wick. Most people on this forum are neither pilots nor in the military however it would be a dull place if we were not permitted to talk freely about military aviation. Perhaps we should all ask your permission before posting? Oh wait we don't have to because you are not in charge of us.

Darius

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Without wanting to be accused of jumping to conclusions, I wondered why the comment of Holy Sh-t was made at the time of the initial flyover? For a moment the apache is out of frame but did the observer on the ground see it strike something we didn't or was it just a comment on a fly over far more noteworthy than normal. After the Apache does its stall turn or whatever they're called in helicopter parlance, it seems to fly straight into the deck without making much attempt to avoid doing so afaics, which caused me to wonder control malfuntion or somesuch, possibly related to an incident in the initial flyover. I would be keen to read some reaction to this from official sources, anyone got a link?

Steve.

Edited by stevehnz
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This sort of arrogant post gets on my wick. Most people on this forum are neither pilots nor in the military however it would be a dull place if we were not permitted to talk freely about military aviation. Perhaps we should all ask your permission before posting? Oh wait we don't have to because you are not in charge of us.

Darius

Exactly we are all entitled to an opinion. some might not like it but thats life.

Well I'm not jumping to conclusions that doesn't look to be the normal way you would land back at base

My thoughts exactly. did not look anyway normal to me.

Julien

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It would be interesting to learn what the crash investigation report states.

It would.

Looking on the net it would seem this happened 6th Feb. However they seem to be putting as much investigation into finding who shot and posted the video as they do to the crash!

Julien

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Whats astonishing is that nobody was killed - including the guy who gets clocked by the tail as it first hits at about 0:35.

I think the "Holy poo-poo" was because he was flying so fast and so low over the base so this really does look like an excess of bravado leading to the end of a flying career. Well at least no civilians were involved this time!

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Looked at this a few times and still think he's got serious air density issues.

Now he could be doing an RRT turn which is what it does look like but if he was in a contact so close to the FOB why are there so many poeple milling about?

If he had control problems why attemt a high risk manouvre like that?

I've also been around Mil aviation for a while and seen some spectacular showboating mishaps, it'll be interesting to see how they cover this up......opps meant to say read the crash report

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When crews do things like this is it an automatic busting and chuck out of the service or do they get a second chance?

I thought they were simply made to fly a cargo plane full of rubber dog sh!t out of Hong Kong :whistle:

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When crews do things like this is it an automatic busting and chuck out of the service or do they get a second chance?

I thought they were simply made to fly a cargo plane full of rubber dog sh!t out of Hong Kong :whistle:

:rofl:

Nope just when they request a flyby

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How can you possibly say that? This sort of off the cuff, ill informed, amateur armchair analysis really gets on my wick. He may well have not been authorised for the initial flyby but who's to say the cause of the accident wasn't technical malfunction, control restriction, pilot incapacitation? It could be all manor of things. Have you examined the wreckage, interviewed the crew, sought technical advice from SME's (subject matter experts), looked at all the other video/camera footage, investigated sabotage/SAFIRE, gathered evidence from the squadron and chain of command? Thought not. Every military accident is thoroughly investigated and everything is considered until ruled out by EVIDENCE.

Having been involved in military aviation for over 20 years I know these things are rarely as simple as the conclusion you have come to by watching some footage on a little screen. Please desist from jumping to conclusions however feel free to comment once you have read the full DoD aircraft mishap report when released.

Hi Haggis,

i concur, nothing is proven until ALL the evidence is in, been sorted, and a conclusion drawn from a position of knowledge.

In defence of the collective, cut us a little slack because, as you point out, most of us are 'amchair pilots' :pilot:

And we DO have a tendency to 'slap our collective chop's.' :suicide:

This sort of arrogant post gets on my wick. Most people on this forum are neither pilots nor in the military however it would be a dull place if we were not permitted to talk freely about military aviation. Perhaps we should all ask your permission before posting? Oh wait we don't have to because you are not in charge of us.

Darius

Hi Darius,

Arrogant ??? Knowledgable maybe, but not arrogant. Haggis has proved, and it's not a requirement, his bona fides, 20 years at the sharp end.

Unfortunatly it's something many of us are guilty of, jumping on the bandwagon before we know the tune to be played!

Don't know what your career is, but, if someone started 'blasting off' particlarly if someones life could be endangered

about something you do every day of the year i think you would be ever so slightly 'miffed'.

I thought they were simply made to fly a cargo plane full of rubber dog sh!t out of Hong Kong

Na! Hong Kong's too easy these days, probably be McMurdo! :analintruder:

FWIW

Paul

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If you look at the start, the guy who almost gets clipped by the tail rotor when it crashes, has got his arms up as though he's trying to get the attention of the pilot and it looks as if a motorized vehicle is coming behind.

Thinks was he coming in to get re-armed/fueled and back out in a hurry which led to the crash.

Just a thought

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It will be interesting to read the accident report, and until then all any of us can do is postulate on what may have gone wrong. However, if it does turn out to be some sort of pilot error I'm sure the person most distraught by the whole incident will be the pilot him/herself. Crikey, when I make a mistake at work all I have to do is fill/ prime and re-spray. When these guys make a mistake, the effects are obviously far more serious. As long as there wasn't any gross negligence then I'm sure the pilot will get another chance, they certainly deserve it, we all do, we are only human after all. That's what happens in the RAF, when people make honest and even deadly mistakes, lessons get learnt, procedures get changed and everyone moves on, after all it costs a fortune to train anyone, air or ground based and it all adds to the experience pile. The guy who crash landed his Harrier in Afghanistan (You've probably seen the footage) is now in the Reds. He messed up but he was totally overworked on his approach, lessons were learnt, people were saying it would happen, but until it did, nothing changed. The guys on the squadron would have punched him on the arm, insulted him in a jocular manner and bought him a drink. People don't get binned automatically and quite right. Thankfully no one was killed and again, I'm sure the pilot is the one most relieved by that.

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OK, I'm a helo ignoramus, but my initial question would be if the pilot was experiencing problems, were there not other places in his immediate vicinity he could have aimed his Apache rather than a building and/or people on the ground?

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