Helos in Iraqi Freedom

[OzMan]

What in the hell is the problem with all of these helos going down?
1. USAF MH-53 Pave Low went down. "Hard Landing". Crew rescued, aircraft destroyed by airstrike
2. Army AH-64 Apache went down. "Hard Landing". Crew ok, took off again.
3. USMC CH-46 Sea Knight crashed. 4 US Marines and 12 British Marines killed.
4. Reports of a Black Hawk crashed or "Hard Landing".

Anyone see a trend? And none of them due to hostile fire. Brown out? Depth Perception? Any other possibilities?

[hood]

I think they fall into the same category as small single engine planes like cessnas and sand pipers. Sure they're great, but ultimately they're rather vulnerable to high wind gusts and bad weather conditions when you compare them to jet aircraft. If anything happens to either of the rotors, the game is over. Pretty risky stuff. A friend of mine's a helicopter pilot, and he said he spent 40 percent of the lesson time learning to fly it, and the other 60 percent practicing auto-rotates in the event of engine failure. Unlike a plane you can glide in, helicopters drop like a rock if you can't do an auto-rotation of some sort.

[Merik]

Well look at it this way,there will always be mechanical or pilot error in any aircraft in wartime or peacetime due to the fact that anything can happen.I think that even though there have been 4 unrelated helo incidents,its good to say that thats all there has been.

[Angus]

I'm sure someone will blame it on dirty homo****** liberals cutting military budgets while getting BJs and courting the votes of socialist and communist sympathizers....

But the fact is that stuff breaks and choppers in particular, seem to always be tetering on the edge of crashing. The whole concept of a helicopter is a bit contrary to the rules of flight. I also understand that an autorotate requires staying above the "dead man's curve" which is something like 100m (or was it feet?) altitude to work. I know there's also a minimum forward speed you have to maintain. Either way, if you're flying nap of the earth and have a problem you're pretty screwed.

[Zoomie]

Well also don't forget that helicopters weren't ment to be sucking in clouds of sand and dirt. Those are factors that'll definatly mess with it's performance. And lately, they've been have lots of sandstorms over there.