Breaking on BBC: US Helicopter crash near Fallujah.

[rooboy]

Originally reported by reuters, mentioned on BBC World tv news bulletin. Details still coming in.

[Pale Blue Dot]

1. How many helicopter crashes is that?

Does anybody know how many helicopters we have in Iraq? And while the human cost is obvious, does anyone know the financial cost?

[UpInArms]

2. oh dear God

this day is not looking good at all

Why, oh why, does not someone with a brain appear to stop this???

When does critical mass sink in to the people of this country??

Do we have to keep sacrificing our/their children to the maws of this thing?

I am so sorry for all the lives ruined.

:cry:

[Sugarbleus]

6. I mirror that sentiment UIA..

It's all just too much!

[Judi Lynn]

3. Just announced in ABC radio news, as well.

Their story said it's breaking, that witnesses said it was hit by RPG's, no other information yett.

[DoYouEverWonder]

4. Looks like the natives

are getting restless again. What a fine mess Bu$h has gotten us into.

[Military Brat]

5. I loathe bush/cheney/rove, despise Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz & Perle

enough said :grr:

[Sugarbleus]

8. I mirror THAT sentiment also..M B

[DeaconBlues]

7. first link for this story

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20031209/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_helicopter

U.S. Copter Reported Shot Down in Iraq


BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. helicopter was shot down Tuesday by a rocket-propelled grenade near the town of Fallujah west of Baghdad, witnesses said.

The U.S. military said it had heard unconfirmed reports of the incident and was trying to confirm them.. (more)

Not looking good.

[papau]

9. good news - it looks like a "controlled landing"

The U.S. military said an OH-58 Kiowa observation helicopter from the 82nd Airborne Division made a "controlled landing" at 2:30 p.m. near Fallujah. A spokesman said he had no further details about the incident.


Omar Ali, a reporter with Associated Press Television News, said two helicopters were flying in formation near the city, about 35 miles west of the capital, when one was struck by a grenade fired from the ground.


It went down immediately in an open field, Ali said. The aircraft appeared structurally intact, but smoke was billowing from it.


Two other helicopters with red crosses emblazoned on their sides landed nearby a few minutes later, he said.

[DeaconBlues]

10. crash now a "controlled landing"

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20031209/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_helicopter&cid=540&ncid=1480


U.S. Copter Hit by Ground Fire in Iraq

BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. helicopter made an emergency landing Tuesday near the town of Fallujah west of Baghdad, apparently after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

The U.S. military said an OH-58 Kiowa observation helicopter from the 82nd Airborne Division made a "controlled landing" at 2:30 p.m. near Fallujah. A spokesman said he had no further details about the incident.


Omar Ali, a reporter with Associated Press Television News, said two helicopters were flying in formation near the city, about 35 miles west of the capital, when one was struck by a grenade fired from the ground.


It went down immediately in an open field, Ali said. The aircraft appeared structurally intact, but smoke was billowing from it....






·

[papau]

11. Why do I feel I'm on ignore!

:-)

[catmandu57]

13. I don't know about ignore

but I feel like I'm stuck in a loop of some horribly bad late night less than b movie. To steal a line from John Prine, All the news just repeats itself.
The casualty count grew by three overnight, we're 51 away from 500 dead, that's 449 families whose year is ruined, thrown away to secure another countries natural resources for their own perverted view of the world.

[Zuni]

12. Terrible night last night

there were several incidents in Iraq, and a suicide bomber in Moscow.

[TheLastMohican]

14. Why the helicopter crews are not using heat decoys?

I mean the soviets started to use them in Afganistan after extensive use of Stinger missiles by mujahadeen and the losses in aircrafts and helicopters quickly decreased. Time to learn from the lessons of the past.

[Paulie]

15. Because RPGs are not guided

Think grenade with a rocket. You can only aim it in the general direction, hoping it will hit the target. The copter must have been flying pretty low...

The problem is the Iraqi's have lots of practice, and are quite good. :( :( :(

[Devils Advocate NZ]

17. The RPG would not be affected.

The RPG is an unguided anti-tank rocket. Like a bullet, it travels in an essentially straight line from the launcher to the aim point, and thus neither flares nor chaff (radar spoofing metal strips) will affect its flight.

In fact seeing as it is designed to be fired at slow moving tanks, the people using them to shoot down helicopters must be exceptionally skilled in their use. Either that, or RPG's are being fired at helicopters all the time, and only a few lucky shots have resulted in hits.

[TheLastMohican]

18. I don't know about you but I don't believe in RPG bull

One has to be one hack of an RPG shooter to get the flying helicopter. And there is only one case of such lucky shot before OIF.
Now we have 3 or 4 accidents with helicopter shot down. This is not RPG, this has to be a guided anti-aircraft rocket, probably SA-7 or a more modern one.
Too many helicopters shot down to believe that luck has anything to do with it.

[RPG-7]

19. Soviets lost a shitload of helicopters to my namesake

back when they were having their go in Afghanistan.

They used volley attacks in teams.

Also you set up at a preset distance of 800 meters so that the self destruct will trigger at the end of flight and the shrapnel kills the copter.

[TheLastMohican]

21. With all due respect, you obviously never fired an RPG-7, have you?

I challenge that you will not hit a stationary barn door with even 2 weeks of practice. Not to mention flying helicopters.
When I was in the army, hitting a slowly moving tank from 300 meters was considered to be a top notch training for the RPG team. And we fired the more modern ones RPG-22, RPG-7 is like aging piece of junk, the ancient weapon of the 60's.

[RPG-7]

22. nope..

but I've seen videos of Afghani's doing exactly that. Without a doubt it requires training but it's definately possible.

[TheLastMohican]

23. It definetely requires quite a lot of training

or we have a military super-RPG guru in Iraq designated to shoot down US choppers. And looking closely at the state of Saddam's army I don't think that is the case.

[RPG-7]

24. maybe ex-mujahadin

Chechen, Bosnian veterans, etc..

Who knows what's going on over there :shrug:

[TheLastMohican]

26. It could be anybody but as I suggested earlier in the thread

I think it could be an anti-aircraft rocket SA-7 (known as Strela-2)

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/missile/row/sa-7.htm

with fairely little practice one is able to shoot something from the skies with that thing.

And the other case points in that direction, do you by any chance remember the shooting on the DHL cargo airplane that caught fire in the engine. Considering the altitude of the plane and its velocity, there is no way in the world I will believe that it was hit by an RPG round.

[catmandu57]

29. If I remember correctly

from the video it was a shoulder fired missle not a rpg fired at the plane.

[northzax]

16. helicopter pilots are amazing

those things are flying death traps, and they still go out, day after day, to do their jobs. absolutely remarkable men and women, those.

Take the Apache, designed to kill soviet tanks, and to have a life expectancy of something like 5 minutes over a battlefield.

[mistertrickster]

20. I have said over and over that we lost more men to helicopters in 'Nam

than we did to the VC's. May not be literally true, but it sure seemed like it. Same story in Iraq. Slow moving vehicles forty feet off the ground with no glide pattern are inherently dangerous IMHO.

[Cooley Hurd]

25. If it was a controlled landing, then why the column of black smoke?

From the video they showed on CNN, it looked like the helicopter was burning...

[htuttle]

27. It landed 'rotor-up'

...therefore it was a controlled landing.

I suppose there's at least a 50% chance of that happening when they come tumbling down out of the sky...

[deutsey]

28. A Reuters photographer says he or she saw flames

coming from the helicopter, from what I've read.

[Nihil]

30. What altitude are they?

As I recall, if the helicopter is on observation duty, it will be
fairly high & slow moving while if it is on attack or A-B work it
will be travelling low & fast. What were the ones shot down doing?

If low and straight, almost anything bigger than a pistol will be
able to hit it (though not necessarily kill it) if the shooter is
in the right place with regard to the helicopter's path.

Are the people over there being stretched into getting sloppy?
(Too often on the same route, too much predictable path instead of
dog-legging). The Iraqis must know that helicopters are vital to
the US Army operations so every one taken out of business is a big
gain for them (not to mention the effect of highly-trained crews
being killed, injured or even temporarily unfit for duty).

Nihil

[Aristus]

31. Isn't it nice that Ramadan is over and our casualties have decreased?

<sarcasm off>

Yep, things 'r' definitely lookin' up, ain't they, Dick?

[RebelOne]

32. Why is there nothing about this on the News websites?