Cassini
Senior Heliman
Location: Enterprise, AL
| It had a chip light followed by overtemp on the main gearbox and the pilots made a precautionary landing down in Bosnia. Unfortunately they landed inside a mine field (no incident upon landing in the minefield). Normally you would sling a blackhawk with the main rotor blades removed but there is a proceedure to leave them in place under emergency conditions such as they were (inside a minefield - you wouldn't want your troops tromping all over the place trying to remove the blades). On shutdown the transmission siezed as the oil pressure dropped. They flew it with the blades on from Bosnia into Croation, landed and refueled the Chinook, took off and flew the rest of the way to Hungary. Why they made the flights like that I don't know. If I was in charge I would have evacuated the Blackhawk to Tuzla, removed the blades there and then sought out weather I would continue slinging it back through Croatia to Hungary.
Supposedly it was after picking up the Blackhawk again in Croatia where the aft strap slipped and moved allowing the severe nose down attitude in flight. This nose down attitude really put alot of preasure on those blades as all the oncomming airpressure was hitting the tops of the blades and resulted in all four blades debonding at the cuffs as you can see in the pictures.
Also, upon arrival in Hungary the main rotor turned just fine with absolutely no indication of a transmission siezure... no overheating evidence of the transmission (blue discoloration of the gearbox). |
jim
