Harriers, Helicopters, and Water, Oh My! Thought some of you guys would find these amusing..... Bell 206 Jet Ranger Harrier
And that, my friends, is what we in the rotary wing business call Dynamic Rollover...what was he thinking? I bet those were his last thoughts too...
You have to remember, the Jet Ranger was working perfectly. It flew him directly to the scene of the crash!
Many, many moons ago (when I was in the AF), we were instructed that the OFFICIAL Air Force definition of crash is..:"A landing in which the vertical velocity is so great, and the time reducing it to zero is so short, that structural failure occurs."
Isn't that similar to the MC's "unofficial" urging that Scarrier pilots try to stay with their ships above all else??? The idea being "If the pilot punches out, it's a crash. If he rides it down then it's only a hard landing. If the "flying surfaces failed upon landing' because the tip gear punches through the wings themselves (or if the wing spars themselves fail); hey, it's still just a hard landing, because officially "the AV-8B very rarely crashes". If the military had wanted a kid with an engineering background and a blown out knee "back in the day"; I think I still would have preferred a Warthog (or even a flying eggbeater) over a Scarrier. 'Course, the Army agrees with me (over the Corps) on that; but that's not all that surprising
Hey SD, that particular harrier incident was a complete engine failure - and I swear that pilot landed right back on the plane, so he only left the ship for a few seconds before returning. Could he chalk that one up as a hard landing? Oh, and speaking of hard landings........ Student pilot trying to land an Airbus
Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, if you can re-use the aircraft it's even better!
Roger that, since 12APR04, and recently as June, I've "spent" about $96mill in Iraq. Walked away from both without a scratch. One was a shoot down, the other a "hard landing". Both helos destroyed. Oops. HEY! I'm a gunner, not a pilot, it wasnt MY fault....as always FLY LUCKY! It'll out perform skill any day!
I'll agree with my large hirsute friend And don't forget that you need to fly lucky while in the States as well. Wasn't all that many weeks ago that a pilot tried to duplicate the Scarrier video up this thread - only his bird splashed down in somebody's backyard swimming pool in a neighborhood too close to the runway approach here in Yuma Marine Corps is still working out how much that's gonna cost!
I thought the pilot did that intentionally 'cause the ground crew "FORGOT" to wash the bird..................
I was at that airshow where the Harrier 'went in'. Thank goodness it was over the sea, and not on land - there would have been flaming bits all over the place. Scary, man. All pilots that eject join a special club that even has it's own tie...some consolation!!
Scary? The bird that flamed out over our town was carrying a couple "live but not armed" 500 pounders and 300-odd rounds of 25mm. That's scary! There were 1250 residences evacuated from the 2km "blast radius" for 14 hours after the crash; until almost all the 25 mike-mike was recovered. Plane landed mostly in a private swimming pool, but it "overlapped" into three other backyards (there was an intersection of 4 property boundaries under the port wing root).
