Posts Tagged HELICOPTERS
An American CH-47 Chinook helicopter was shot down while in a CSAR mission on Sturday 6 August 2011. Yesterday’s death toll has increased to reach 38 KIAs – 31 American soldiers. Most of them belonged to the NAVY SEAL who were on-board to help the troops on the battlefield during a heavy firefight. Seven of them were Afghan passengers. Video:
The Mil V-12 was the largest helicopter ever built (37-meter long!). It performed its first flight in 1968, and outperformed all the other helicopters in the world. Thanks to its twin rotor, it could lift up to 44 tons as early as 1969. It never entered service as this prodigious prototype remained at the project stage, and for uncleared reasons, its production was cancelled.
VIDEO:
Note that the American military and the Russian Rosoboronexport have previously sealed a contract for the supply of twenty-one Mi-17V5 multipurpose helicopters to Afghanistan. Here is the new agreement that should be signed as well:
Some pictures of a US Navy SEAL helicopter that crash-landed during the assault on Osama Bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan show some shapes different from a more traditional MH-60 Black Hawk.
This wreckage – the size of a Black Hawk – consists of a rotor with a disk on top of it; special fairings; and a fairly different tail rotor – with five, perhaps six blades.
However, thanks to David Cenciotti’s blog, and thanks to AeroManouch who passed this piece of information on, we can see that the tail rotor would rather have five blades, and it visibly is not an RAH-66 Comanche.
According to Bill Sweetman, a defense technology and aerospace pundit from Aviation Week, this chopper might be a Black Hawk upgraded into a stealth helicopter version:
