We got put under a gag order last week. Happens when a bird goes down. I was out working on one of our birds when a maintainer breezed by and said, "We just lost a bird." That was all he said. We hoped for more info, but of course, it was just happening so there was none.
I've looked in the news reports, and it's not there. Amazing, since they report everything else that goes wrong.
One of our Apaches was lost in an accident. No enemy fire. It just went down. Reports had it hitting the ground at 70 knots. She rolled several times, the tail boom coming completely off. In her last acts, the bird saved those pilots. Everything in her that was designed for the last saving act worked. The landing gear struts compressed, absorbing some of the energy of the crash. The seats cushioned, further abosrbing. The glass spiderwebbed, the canopies popped out, the fuel tanks didn't explode, the computers aborbed impact... She saved them.
The pilots should not have made it out. They walked away.
They brought the bird back. She's now stored in the hangar next to mine. It's sealed, pending investigation, under 24 hour guard. But, I got to see her when she was brought in and when the hangar was first set up. She came in three pieces... three separate Chinooks slingloaded her home; three separate flatbeds hauled her to the hangar. Looking at her was sad. Just the other day, we'd worked on her. When we perform work, everything must be just so. Very precise and neat. Now to see the mangled mess.... sad.
She's good for nothing but scrap and borrowed parts now...
Sad.
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