NEWS: Blackhawk Crashes in Texas Kills Seven Including A General, page 1

posted on Nov, 30 2004 @ 12:27 AM

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A U.S. Army Blackhawk crashed after hitting the support wires for a television tower. Seven on board were killed including a brigadier general. The tower had warning lights, but they had been knocked out by last weeks storm. Rescuers at the scene report that the fog was so thick that only half the tower was visible. The cause of the accident is under investigation.

story.news.yahoo.com
BRUCEVILLE-EDDY, Texas (AP) - A U.S. army helicopter carrying a brigadier general and six other soldiers crashed and burned in the fog Monday after hitting a web of support wires on a TV transmission tower whose warning lights had been knocked out in a storm last week, officials said. Everyone aboard was killed.

The UH-60 Black Hawk, bound for the Red River Army Depot in Texarkana, went down in a field about 50 kilometres northeast of Fort Hood. The fog was so thick when emergency crews arrived that they could not see more than halfway up the tower, authorities said.

The helicopter was headed to check out equipment being readied for use in Iraq, said Lt.-Col. Jonathan Withington, spokesman for the Fort Hood-based 4th Infantry Division. The names of the victims, all from Fort Hood, were not immediately released by the military.

A military official at the home of Brig.-Gen. Charles Allen told The Associated Press that Allen was among those killed. In his 27-year career, Allen, an assistant division commander for the 4th Infantry Division, was stationed at several U.S. and overseas military posts and also worked at the Pentagon.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

You have to wonder if they could program the locations of all of these obstructions into the GPS navigation systems to have an automatic warning for pilots. Great care would have to be exercised though. A few months ago we landed at the wrong hospital. The GPS coordinates were correct the book that listed them was not.

Horus_Re

posted on Nov, 30 2004 @ 01:01 AM

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I remember seeing a docu,over helicopters and they showed a model that could eject it blades,howcome this technology is not applied,seeing all the recent heli accidents the US has sustained and like you metion the gps positioning of all obstructions could be loaded on a fly-by-wire system...Is that not possible...

I believe that the helicopter I'm talking about also had a parachute..

[edit on 30-11-2004 by Horus_Re]

FredT

posted on Nov, 30 2004 @ 01:04 AM

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Originally posted by Horus_Re
I remember seeing a docu,over helicopters and they showed a model that could eject it blades,howcome this technology is not applied,

One of the Russian attack chopters has an ejection seat for the pilot and gunner. But to fit such a system to a transport chopter would probable render it unable to take off and you could not aoutfit ever seat with one in any case.

HowlrunnerIV

posted on Nov, 30 2004 @ 01:32 AM

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Because most helicopters use auto-rotation as their emergency landing device, the helicopter equivalent of gliding an aeroplane.

In Australia two Blackhawks went down loaded with SAS when they flew into each other on a night-time exercise. The pilots were relying on NVGs for vision and navigation.

The best description of the difficulty of that is in the book Chinook (I forget the author's name, he's a Brit).

Ever been driving or skiing in fog? When the sun came out I found myself around the back of a mountain I knew intimately. I thought I was carefully making my way down the main run. I used to ski three days a week for years.

I'm surprised they didn't climb higher. Although if it was uncontrolled airspace and thick fog...would you want to?