AH 64 accident video

[rajflyboy]

What the heck happened to cause this?

 

[Traderd]

What the heck happened to cause this?

Having not been in the cockpit or on the FEB, I really don't know. Most observers are being critical because it looks like they were performing a RTT (return to target) kind of maneuver and failed to maintain terrain clearance. Why they would be performing such a maneuver in an environment where there doesn't appear to be threat to fire upon, only the crew knows.

I had the misfortune of watching almost this exact same accident scenario while flying in the desert many years ago. We were a flight of three F model Cobras and a friend was chalk 3 with an foriegn observer. He left the flight on multiple occasions to "show the guy what we can do." I was a WOJG and he a newly minted PC of W2 rank.

At some point he asked me on company fox what he could do to shake the guy up. I responded he should just rejoin the flight. Our platoon leader was in the lead ship and gave him a direct order to rejoin the flight. He didn't.

Instead I saw him fly past us at a high rate of speed, pull nose up steep and turn on his tail. He couldn't have been more than a 100 feet as we were on the deck ourselves. He impacted just to my rear. He died but somehow, the observer in the front seat survived. No idea what led him to this choice.

The RTT was and remains a valid manuever in certain circumstances. Since our mission was anti-armor, we never trained for it as pulling up with your tail towards an armored column or even a set of flank vehicles would pretty much be the end of you. The Cav, with more of an anti-personnel mission has more use for the thing.

I have sat on FEBs. These aviators better have their ducks in a row and the RA and mission briefing had best allowed for the maneuver or you can expect some serious consequences. There was a time in Army Aviation where such mistakes were tolerated. Those days were gone long ago.

 

[rajflyboy]

I think its common for AH64 crews to practice RTT's however it looks like this particular Apache was conducting an airshow of some sort.

Was this a planned airshow or an impromptu "Hey Watch This" deal?

The RTT's make the Apache a very deadly machine along with its long distance weapons range. It can conduct movement to contact or sit and wait in a battle position type missions. Either way its a very very capable machine.

 

[daviator]

Flew Apaches for 10 years. Return to Target (RTT) is not an approved maneuver. Stealth using terrain is the preferred technique. What makes the aircraft different from others is its stand off capability.

 

[SWA Aviator]

I agree with the above post. If you look at the blades right before impact you will see they were coning. It must have been at high altitude.

 

[rajflyboy]

Flew Apaches for 10 years. Return to Target (RTT) is not an approved maneuver. Stealth using terrain is the preferred technique. What makes the aircraft different from others is its stand off capability.

So

are you saying you never did an RTT in your 10 years of flying Apache's??

 

[Traderd]

Flew Apaches for 10 years. Return to Target (RTT) is not an approved maneuver. Stealth using terrain is the preferred technique. What makes the aircraft different from others is its stand off capability.

10 years? What'd get, like 100 hours?

I kid, I kid. Attack guys never got the time when I was there.

I was an RL3 WOJG in the F model when the Apache was fielded. True story:

DES came to town to brief on the Apache. Bottom line was that you would need some kind of high time as a Cobra IP to get into the Q course. Had to be a gun flying god is how one of them put it. Us newbies left the briefing assuming we were out of contention with those kind of standards.

Flash forward 8 months or so. Rucker has a team at our operation and every pilot, gun, scout or huey, was required to have his head measured (Not examined even though that would have probably been a good idea). So we all trot over to ops where we sat in a chair and had an honest to god flight surgeon take a tape measure and record the diameter of our brain buckets.

It turned out that there was an oversupply of a helmet size or maybe a shortage of a helmet size or some such thing at Rucker and as such, they were going to fill the course with guys whose head would fit the helmets they had in stock! We lost not a single gun guy, but three 58 pilots and the HQ huey pilot. As I had the "largest head in the battalion", I was once again not fit for the seat!

I'm sure things have changed over the last 20-25 years (for example the 64 OR rate might now be acceptable) but I will never forget this example of Army Life as I came to know it. Just can't make this stuff up.

By the way, I flew the Cobra for 8 years and witnessed many an RTT. The Vietnam era guys valued the manuever based on their experience. But as we were equipped and trained to fight armor, the move just didn't have any real value. And targeting systems such as ours made the thing obsolete. Stand off is your friend. The Hellfire was a godsend (TOF on a TOW compared to a tank mainround?). Drones are even better.

 

[Hogprint]

Hey Tradered,

Did that accident happen in Egypt by any chance? Had a Cobra IP at Rucker relay a similar story about a Cobra accident during a training exercise. Said they went in inverted and the canopy was buried in the sand but they could hear the Egyptian screaming and were able to pull him out.

Just wondering.

Agree with the above posts...did an RTT from time to time but they were not approved nor necessary in the threat environment we were training for. Having said that, they were talked about constantly and it's something I'm glad I had in the bag of tricks just in case

 

[Traderd]

Hey Tradered,

Did that accident happen in Egypt by any chance? Had a Cobra IP at Rucker relay a similar story about a Cobra accident during a training exercise. Said they went in inverted and the canopy was buried in the sand but they could hear the Egyptian screaming and were able to pull him out.

Just wondering.

Agree with the above posts...did an RTT from time to time but they were not approved nor necessary in the threat environment we were training for. Having said that, they were talked about constantly and it's something I'm glad I had in the bag of tricks just in case

Yeah, it was in Egypt; A Sinai tour. As you know, there is just no way to understand some of the bad choices people make when someone else is watching. I have been guilty but lucky enough to never do harm or be discovered.

The RTT was a favorite of every Vietnam era guy I flew with; they swore by thing and most had stories of how effective it was in their threat environment of small arms. Kind of fun to do but in the Cobra you had to watch the top. The thing required a half G positive and you can get a bit light. The F models I flew were pretty much pigs but the G models were lighter and better suited.

 

[rajflyboy]

RTT is kinda outdated now that you can sit 2 miles away and fire hellfires

 

[ghostrider64]

Glad I'm not flying guns any longer....you guys make it out to be one boring profession....flew cobras and 64s...and chinooks. And yes a chinook is fully capable of doing an RTT, among other things....it's called having fun.

But I guess some folks capabilities aren't as good as others, primarily based on who did, or as it is today, who did not train them to perform maneuvers that aren't prohibited, but seem to be frowned upon.


BTW the first so called sky god Apache IP fatality was a genuine tool!!!! Tried to rat us out for doing an illegal goggle flight, that we told the TOOL we did, to the BDE commander. He looked like an idiot after I told the Commander that we didn't actually fly the previous night.