Bin laden helo crash site

[Jetdriver69]

I never meant to disparage anyone in the 160th and if it appeared so, I apologize. I had very great friends who flew for the those guys and they were always very professional. But for those you criticized my comments, I see you have zero helicopter experience. I was a military IP in helos and an accident investigator. To answer someone else, I did fly SF out of Bad Tolz in West Germany on several occasions during Operation Flintlock exercises and I did fly into very confined spaces at high weights with NVGs. To criticize the planning of this raid does not reflect on the bravery of the men flying the mission. If I was off on the causal event of the accident, settling with power and/or high sink rate with high PA/DA is certain to be found contributory. But I do not belief the pilots were intentionally "set up to fail" because of the high value target, that is rediculous. I just believe in this case, a few things might have been overlooked or were not thought to be a high value by the higher ups planning the raid. I have seen it before in Bosnia and Somalia, to name a few.

 

[Bjammin]

It doesn't matter if you were Helo IP so-n-so, there is NO WAY you could know what happened and guessing is just not called for.
When a A/C commander signs for an aircraft he takes full responsibility for that aircraft and his PAX thus you ARE disparaging them by saying, He should have done this, not done that, etc. If it was a faulty plan a good aircraft commander would not put his or his PAX lives at that sort of unnecessary risk.
Let's celebrate their success first, find out the facts of the accident second, and lightly lay blame, if there is any, last. No one got hurt or captured and B/L is no more, that = success!!!!

 

[JungleJett]

You should have quit while you were behind. The accident has been discussed at length where I am and among those discussing were quite a few former 160th pilots..not a one said, "oh..they must have done this...or done that" There was more discussion on the helicopter that crashed.