Went down to pick up the company’s Premier from Maintenance and the day before the Tower said
they had a 83 mph straight line wind gust and the Army had a Chinook on the ramp and this is what damage it did to one of the rotor blades. Looks worse in person.
That’s actually pretty tame; back in ‘12, six brand spankin’ new AH-64Ds got caught in a thunderstorm in the midwest:
I did a double take when I drove past them on post the following morning.
Wow they did get damaged badly.
Thanks for sharing.
oh wow. Is there any way to prevent that? I mean, without having hangar space to park them inside?
Tie them down like on the carrier deck I suppose - but without anchors available they would need some portable ones - say large concrete blocks with embedded anchors to place around each machine.
Can’t speak for the Chinook in the first picture, but the AH-64s were prepped for flight and they blew off storm warnings until the last minute, which didn’t leave them enough time to tie everything down.
so could you say someone made a career-ending duckup?
No, a lot of butt chewing went on, but division HQ was deployed at the time and the 1 star in charge was a former Apache driver. He covered it up.
Must have required a mighty large tarp…
Wheels
I recall the language he used in the VTC was to the tune of “we can’t get parts for the new helicopters, we want the old ones back.”
I’ll bet the Alpha wouldn’t tip over, those damn radomes raised the centre of gravity
But serioulsy, holy damn…
I see rocket pods but empty Hellfire rails…were they loaded with munitions when this happened?
If so, getting the munitions unloaded and saved can be a headache in itself…there was the day onboard the mighty ship USS GUAM when "gravity took over…I wasn’t there for it, but…
https://forums.mudspike.com/t/so-no-joke-there-i-was/10109/52?u=hangar200
Rarely, if ever, have munitions loaded unless they’re going to the range. The Deltas (and now Echoes) are pretty loaded, especially with the radar, so they’ll try to save weight wherever possible.