Navy Helicopter Crash

this aint funny man! 11 out of the 12 people died in hat crash! damn it isnt a laughing matter.

It happened on 12/09/1999

Eighteen Marines were aboard the CH-46 Sea Knight when it crashed during a training exercise. The Marines were to test their special tactics skills, such as boarding ships, in preparation for a six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf.

Fourteen Marines on the helicopter were ready to rappel 30 feet down a rope onto a Navy tanker when the aircraft crashed.

Navy SEALS quickly rescued 11 Marines, but seven others were presumed dead following a search for survivors that lasted into the next night. The bodies were later recovered by an un-manned submersible vehicle

All those aboard the chopper were from Miramar Naval Air Station and part of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Pendleton, north of San Diego.

From AP

but the truth is - no one knows what went wrong except the pilot. Whether it be pilot error or engine failure - it's horrific to see these things happen. And those of you who think this is funny - think of their loved ones - would you be laughing if it were one of your relatives?

The clip shows just enough for all of you to make statements to satisfy your immediate fantasys and it bothers me to no end! As the dad of one of these MARINES, you need to get a copy of the JAG report before making wrong or very sad statements about our men in uniform. There were 9 mistakes, plus other miscues made but none of which each and every one of you so gleefully mention. Our MARINE, Your MARINE! OOOHRAH!

Ok, my dad used to fly these helicopters in the US Navy. he retired before this accident occured. What happened was what other people suggested, towards the end of the approach, the helicopterwas a little low, as itcame towards the helopad a little low, the left main gear, caught one of the safety edge wires. this caused the helicopter's nose to come down and the nose gear to hit the deck. The pilot then added collective to make the helicopter go up. The left main gear was still caught on the wire,. you can actually see the wire bend up while caught on the gear as the helicopter climbs. The wire was able to come up to a certain point until it could not move up anymore, this caused the left side of the helicopter to not rise like the helicopter wanted. This caused the torque to the left,. The more power the pilot added to climb, the worse the torque became. this caused the helicopter to lean to the right, once you get past a certain list. The lift vector down created by the blades of the helicopter is not enough to equal the wieght of the helicopter. this causes the helicopter to sink (loose altitude). Very sad indeed. I am not saying it is pilot error, there are many factors that could of made the helicopter drop those few feet of altitude at the end to get caught on the safety fence. Very sad event indeed. By the way I am a pilot and and going to college to get a degree in aviation managment. I hope this cleared up some questions.

I'm not gonna pretend I know S**t about flying.

Just wanna say how sad it makes me to watch this, condolences to the relatives of those lost...

I spoke with one of the Marines that was on this helicopter tonight, Erik Kapitulik. He is a true hero. The real facts are that 7 men died in this helicopter crash and 5 survived, with Erik being one of them.

If any of you out there think you are a real man, compare yourself to this guy.

where and when was this and which boats were there?

Whatever the reason, it was a tragic loss of life.
Untill/if the accident report is ever released, we will never truly know the reason.
Don't forget, these men were training for serving and protecting this our country and you.

FYI, it was a Boeing, CH-46E/F Sea Knight.
Not a Chinook.

After speaking with the (then) Marine Captain who was on that helicopter, it was supposed to come in and hover above the deck since the Marines were going to fast rope onto the ship for the take-over training exercise. Since the max payload is something like 25,000 pounds, and the capacity is 33 passengers, it was not overloaded. The pilot came in too low and caught a wheel; then there was no chance. They did not all perish in the crash, but I do not remember the number. There were a lot of injuries, but there were even more becuase the Marines were standing up getting ready to drop through the bottom of the helicopter, not strapped in, so they were thrown all over when it flipped.

It's a Sea Knight, similar in design but considerably smaller than a Chinook. There were no fatalities and the only people on board were the PIC, co-pilot and 2 crewchiefs. The Sea Knight will float for up to two hours.

It was also not overloaded. The left main gear snagged to the M

I am a helicopter pilot and the specific cause of the crash (cause of rollover into sea) is called "Dynamic Rollover" - it was caused when the helicopter started to lift off again and the forward motion of the ship brought the safety fence in contact with the rear left wheel of the helicopter.

3 key elements make up this hazardous condition. They are: A pivot point, a rolling moment, and weight equal to thrust at some time during the maneuver. What actually happens is that the helicopter will start to roll over on its side using one skid, or wheel, as the pivot point. Once the aircraft starts to roll with the wheel snagged in the fence - and the ship moving forward as the helicopter tried to pull away - it compounded the problem. I am sorry for the loss. Naval aviators fly in the highest risk environments and accidents happen.

This Aircraft that all of you have been refering to as the chinook..in fact is not.. this is the Navy version of the chinook. If you notice it only has one forward landing gear... This is the CH-46 Sea Knight. And the gentelman that calimed to be a pilot is absolutely correct.

I have determined that every F**king out of work pilot is here telling each of us how this thing went down.....hello?!! Get a Life!! In the meantime please put down the crack pipe and back away from the computer.

first it isn't a chinook its a CH-46 sea knight, second it came down to the landing gear getting caught on the safety fence on the side, the POWER is what made it flip over not the lack of it. On top of that the pilot followed the correct procedure by adding power but since the landing gear was tangled in the netting it just flipped him over instead of up. 12 people in a 46 is not even close to capacity even with 80 pound packs (which is not what they would have been carrying). I remember this crash it was one of the units on base. Pilot did what should have fixed it, but since it was tangled up it just made it worse. If he would have known he was tangled up on the fence he could have just shut down the engines to stop making lift it would have been on the edge but it won't have went over. But there is no way for the pilot to know he was caught on the fence.

Look, I am a Royal Australian Navy sailor, we have tens of hundreds of Chinooks. Weight was not a factor at all, I have seen a Chinook lift a 2 tonne truck. It was human error. The landing gear snagged on the released safety fence, the pilot tried to land still, and the pull of the safety fence pulled the Chinook back into the water. And Russia, if you are Russian, you don't even have Chinooks so what the hell are you on about?

good

WAKE UP, who is in control, who has reponsibility for the passengers, who has responsibility to refuse the load, who has the training to make the BIG decisions. Spoken like a true pilot, "not the pilots fault". Unfortunately sometimes life is a BIG S**t SANDWHICH and you get a BIG BITE of it. For those of you viewing this and are not in aviation, comments about it not being the Piltots fault is another example of the international brethren of pilots circling the wagons. Certainly is unfortunate there is a loss of life. Only one question relley needs answering, WHO SIGNED FOR THE AIRCRAFT, he is the one REPONSIBLE end of story.

i'm not an expert or anything, but i noticed that the copter came in too low. but there is also something that you all were overlooking. i don't think it was the matter of the weight that was the problem since chainnook were suppose to be able to do that kind of job easly, but could it be that the netting got in the way?

padan muke kamu celaka mampus semua nye

ha ha the safe rope became not safe ?

DIPSHIT!!!

hahahahaha

THE PILOT IS A WOMAN...

he didn't know how to land...!!

God bless those souls and for those of you who laughed-burn in hell

i think osama bin ladin was in that hellicopter

how can you make a helicopter landing zone with rails around it ??? :P

that S**t S**ks

everyone thinks this is funny are idiots!

I'm 99.9% sure that this crash was during the 15th MEU's SOC exercise off the coast of southern CA in Dec '99. I was in one of the birds seen circling in the background at the start of this vid. This part of the exercise was a ship interdiction. Five helos total were to dump Marines on the back of this ship to simulate a ship interdiction. Just under half a platoon of Force Recon Marines were on this bird that landed in the drink. If you look closely it looks like one man falls/jumps through the open hell hole in the bottom just before it lands in the drink. The Zodiacs (small boats behind) had SEAL rescue swimmers in it. But as you can see the bird sinks so fast they couldn't pull anyone out. I believe what happened was the helo got in to a low pressure area behind the super structure of the ship (because the ship was moving full ahead) and lost a few feet of altitude which is how it caught it's landing gear on the safety net. I hadn't thought about this accident in while. It's weird as hell seeing it so clearly. I knew every man that died that day.

Poor guys.. that is not funny

hope they all survived poor people

That was a Marine Corps helicopter, NOT Navy.

Where are all the people laughing at this? I don't see anything pertaining to that, but yet I see all these comments about not laughing at this clip. I am not laughing at it, cause I know it's tragic.

care little about the video of their expiration.

I don't know if he was low on fuel but he came in way too low to execute a safe landing .. may have been over loaded but he should have been able to lift off again after F**king up the 1st attempt. Don't know what the death toll was but at the end of the day soldiers follow orders no one deserves to die for that. Some of the comments on here are shallow and sick.

pilot is tired sleepy

sooooooooooooo real man!!!

I served six years in the Navy and during that time I did a stint on the USNS Leroy Grumman. We used to do exercises with the Seals and Navy helicopter pilots. I had to facilitate the comms between the pilots and the ships. These pilots would practice landing on the ship and then take off really fast. They are absolutely crazy. There were a couple of times that I thought they would run right into the flight tower that I was standing in. This looks just like the type of ship that I served on. Those pilots are nuts.

I said exactly what the person in the video said. Could be turbulence that caused it?

I hope everybody were safe on that horrible crash

Please tell me that everybody came out of the safely?

I hope the whoever was in that lived.

Looks to mee like the pilot came in too low and the rear wheel of the aircraft got caught on the ships railing. When the pilot tried to pull up, the copter went out of control.

a couple more metres and he would of made it, steve the chopper sounded like it was working alrite, sounds like u need your hearing checked!

Did they jump to save them?

This pilot was very experienced. But I believe his experience went against him that day. He didn't follow protocol for landing a helicopter on a moving vessel. The ship will pitching and rolling, even if the water is fairly calm like it was here. The correct way to gauge this is to bring the heli along the starboard side in line with the landing stage. One the pilot has matched the speed of the vessel he can then traverse to a position above the stage and descend onto the vessel, sometimes the vessle will rise to the helicopter depending on the sea swell, but this isn't a problem once a stable approach has been gained.
This accident is very rare but it was a pilot error unfortunately. But this same pilot would have done a lot more landings were he did saved lifes and deployed troops.

You don't die from falling in the water when inside something especially when there was no fire or anything. You can always get out...it was a stupid way to die because if they had the necessary skills they could have lived!!

Sorry for the people on that helicopter may they R.I.P