AH-1 Cobra crash during Top Gear Korea shoot

Yikes; glad everyone is ok.

 

Whoa. How do we know everyone was ok?

All the best,
Andrew.

 

I don't see a tail rotor blade. I don't know if the engine was running or not, but no tail rotor blade visible is a problem. Maybe the image isn't good enough to capture it?

 

http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/dpp/entertainment/home-video-captures-helicopter-crash-in-coolidge-3-2-2012

I believe the pilots appear in the aftermath footage.

 

That's good to hear.

All the best,
Andrew.

 

OMG. The still seems to make it look like it is likely to be unsurvivable. The video has a lot of sand fly. But the video has what appears to be two injured servicemen. One of whom shakes hands.

I think they survived. That must be a tough bird. Tough guys and maybe a little bit soft sand.

If the rotor was lost what would you do? Power off? I had a stuck accelerator last week. Turned ignition off and coasted to a parking spot.

 

They survived. The Cobra has excellent survivability for the pilot, but not so much for the gunner who sits down in front. This time, the roll kept the nose from digging in which is usually fatal to the gunner.

If you are asking about the tail rotor being lost, it is an anti-torque device. If the tail rotor goes, you decouple the engine from the main rotor and auto-rotate to a landing/crash. It's important to decouple the engine right away before the airframe starts to spin. Once it starts to spin from torque, you can't ever recover.

 

Man now I know what he plowed in really means!

 

These pilots should play the lottery - that didn't look good, glad they got out!!!

 

Not tail rotor failure. It had a hyd failure. That usually causes the stick to go hard to one side, or forward or both. I guess the tail rotor didn't show in the image

 

Shallow angle of approach and low speed plus soft ground. Very lucky! Looks like they couldn't pull out of their nose-down-and-descending attitude in time. Glad there was no fire. What do you guys reckon their ground speed was? Looks like 50-60 kts to me?

Tail rotor seems to be functional in the first second or so of the video, when the whole fuselage is in view.

 

If you watch the Fox video on their site, you can see the tail rotor going. They aslo talk about the pilot having to shut down the engine after the crash. I do not know what caused it. Low side failure, high speed shaft failure, etc something with reduced power to the point of an auto rotation.

Also some of the Amry helios have an cambered ferring that will allow the helio to fly striaght at a given speed the Blackhawk's allows it to fly at 40 knots and 110 if I remember correctly.

 

Holy criminy that's insane.

Helicopters beat the air into submission...

 

Wow. Must've had no fuel on board.

 

That was not an auto rotation. The engine was making full power. There was plenty of fuel on board. They had a failure of the hydraulic system that manages the flight controls. Here is a link to what usually happens when the Cobra hyd system goes bad:

http://www.copters.com/pilot/hyd_fail.html

The plane is still controllable from the back seat, but not from the front. It will still dive and turn, but it can be manuvered a bit.

 

I saw that on the news...some of those guys on the ground need to buy lotto tix!

 

These guys were doing somethign called a RTT (Return to Target).

It is a very dangerious maneuver. We used to do them in the Blackhawks with the mini guns mouted straight forward and controlled by the pilot similar to the DAPs in the 160th SOAR.

If you are not trainned properly and or do not do the maneuver 100% correct you can end up bouncing off the ground like these guys. RTTs or RTs are usually not an approved outside of the SOAR community.

In other words they were showing off for the people on the ground. I know one of the guys that is involved in this investigation. IMO these guys will probably not be flying in the future.

 

That's almost a cartoonish crash