Helicopter crash

160th. Happened back in 09 with them while doing fast roping onto the ship. One fatal in that one.
 
Or any mixing Army with Navy...if this is the case...I spent time at sea on LHA's as an Army Pilot...also participated in the DAST's for writing the interoperability manual for such ops. Navy environment is always an accident waiting to happen even when you know and understand what is happening.
 
Warlock said:
Or any mixing Army with Navy...if this is the case...I spent time at sea on LHA's as an Army Pilot...also participated in the DAST's for writing the interoperability manual for such ops. Navy environment is always an accident waiting to happen even when you know and understand what is happening.
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Not sure what point you are trying to make? Are you saying mixing Army/Navy is a potential disaster or simply helo operations at sea are an accident waiting to happen?

I have served on three LHDs and was an HCO on a destroyer. I never felt like flight ops were an accident waiting to happen.

Only times I got edgy was doing flight ops on the destroyer with Marines - they tended to be a lot more aggressive and flew lower/flatter approaches than the Navy guys.
 
On yachts, helicopter ops are most definitely an accident waiting to happen, nobody has correct training and the landing area is chock full of hazards.
 
The 60 carried 17 souls? Is that a normal load? Was just surprised by the number. Guess i can go look it up,,,

Found this:

The UH-60A is equipped with troop accommodations for eight, which can be removed to accommodate four full-sized medical litters. The Black Hawk can transport 11 fully equipped combat soldiers in an assault ready configuration, or 14 in a maximum capacity situation. Maximum troop carrying capacity is 20 lightly equipped personnel
 
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LT4247 said:
The 60 carried 17 souls? Is that a normal load? Was just surprised by the number. Guess i can go look it up,,,

Found this:

The UH-60A is equipped with troop accommodations for eight, which can be removed to accommodate four full-sized medical litters. The Black Hawk can transport 11 fully equipped combat soldiers in an assault ready configuration, or 14 in a maximum capacity situation. Maximum troop carrying capacity is 20 lightly equipped personnel
Click to expand...

Since its a SOAR MH-60, I suspect they were doing shipboard fast roping to the ship. If that's the case, they remove most of the seats. Probably had 4 air crew and 13 special ops personnel in the back.
 
Fearless Tower said:
Not sure what point you are trying to make? Are you saying mixing Army/Navy is a potential disaster or simply helo operations at sea are an accident waiting to happen?

I have served on three LHDs and was an HCO on a destroyer. I never felt like flight ops were an accident waiting to happen.

Only times I got edgy was doing flight ops on the destroyer with Marines - they tended to be a lot more aggressive and flew lower/flatter approaches than the Navy guys.
Click to expand...

Actually both...Trying to put Attack assets which we were doing to deliver a heavier punch than anything that day VFR, Marine assets could provide was problematic at best...we speak a different language...none of our Armament has an manual arm switch like Naval ordinance...our rocket pods are fused from the cockpit and we don't punch them off with a failure to fire rocket... Blades don't fold and cannot be placed on an elevator...our HAR's enters free inertia within min over calm water.... the list goes on and on...

Add to that lots of water and its difficult to work it out....
 
My only experience with helicopters and a ship was back in the 80's. I was doing time building whenever I could. One Saturday my instructor called and said he was going out to a crew boat 90 miles from Galveston in a 206L. He picked me up at Hobby, we flew to Scholes and refueled, then it was off on the adventure.

When we approached the boat I noted there were 6'-10' waves and the boat was pretty unsteady. Masts and cranes, cables, all sorts of stuff, and it seemed like they ringed the pad quite closely. My instructor was an old hand, and he landed without a problem. I, on the other hand, had a big problem with the motion. Hell, I get on a boat and I'm seasick inside the breakwater.

We unloaded the parts we were carrying and the crew invited us for lunch. Ham and green peas, the perfect meal for a landlubber... :goofy:

After spending some time in the head I couldn't get off that boat too soon. We took off, and I felt like I was gonna hurl all the way back to Hobby.

I haven't improved over the years, still get seasick easily. Transderm Scop disks are a blessing from God... :D
 
Warlock said:
Actually both...Trying to put Attack assets which we were doing to deliver a heavier punch than anything that day VFR, Marine assets could provide was problematic at best...we speak a different language...none of our Armament has an manual arm switch like Naval ordinance...our rocket pods are fused from the cockpit and we don't punch them off with a failure to fire rocket... Blades don't fold and cannot be placed on an elevator...our HAR's enters free inertia within min over calm water.... the list goes on and on...

Add to that lots of water and its difficult to work it out....
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Sounds like an interoperability problem.

As far as the Navy goes, to paraphrase Grampaw Pettibone, follow the NATOPS and you will be safe.
 
Yeah mixing Army & Navy never works. I'm sure glad the SEALs don't fly on helicopters from the Army's 160th too often. Has that ever worked out? :rolleyes2:
 
Sounds like all will recover without serious injury. Good to hear.

We did helo ops on my destroyer for at sea replenishment alot. I was not flying at the time, but never saw anything that looked dangerous. I was on the crash team as the pilot / crew extractor. Suited up in the proximity suit and waited for nothing to happen. It was hot in there!
 
They crash one on every mission. They have a quota, you know. (I'm trying out the whole sarcasm thing)

SkyDog58 said:
No **** Sherlock. My comment was sarcasm directed at the post about mixing Army and Navy.
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I sense much anger in you.
 
My first introduction to Navy Ops was during the train up for Operation Earnest Will, the operation that boosted the 160th to the forfront of Army Aviation.

I was a member of another organization in USAEUR that trained in parallel and stood down...we specialized in night deep attack with AH-1's which at the time was unconventional at best...TOW missiles really are day VFR only. Shooting them with one early ANVS 5 Goggle tube in the TSU dropped the effective range and the results were miserable...more of an area fire weapon rather than point detonating. Shooting them under illume did not work well either.

Two things tubed our participation lack of Command and Control, as a 1LT (P), I was the only mission trained current commission officer, attack aviator in Europe, although I was willing to be the AMC, in hindsight was a good call, and we had no ships in the end to work with to progress to night landing qualls...we were rather land locked.

Whole different story was the ****ing contest over our units name...Nightstalkers (One Word) The 160th is two words...we lost that on as well...I still have a few of those patches.

Absolutely nothing was saved in the form of AAR's other than war stories...so along came JSHIP in the late 90s after the debacle of sending AH-64s to Macedonia and DOD thinking they should have put them on a Navy Ship to provide the heavy strike that only and Apache can dish out...for the Cobra guys I am sorry there is just no comparison. JSHIP was designed to write the manual on how its done...it never got published. I enjoyed my time in San Diego and no matter how you looked at it the operational chasm between Navy an Army Aviation was very hard to overcome in even a controlled environment.

Interoperability is the issue when conventional forces are used...Start putting Ah-64s and CH-47s on LHA's like the Tarawa or worse LPD 2 spot ships like the Duluth now in mothballs and your asking for problems.

Just maintaining the currency for shipboard operations is next to impossible logistically...we tried it just did not work...if you google JSHIP there is probably references to the testing.
 
That's a very interesting part of history I hadn't heard of before, even after being in TF for a few years. I still can't believe what you guys managed to do with the -5's! My hat's off to you for all you guys contributed "back in the day".
 
We had some Seabats on board our destroyer in the fall of '87. I thought my engineering Chief's were crusty, until I met those CWO4's. :hairraise:
 
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