CNN Breaking: US Helicopter down in Baqubah...

...north of Baghdad.

Link courtesy of NNN0LHI :hi::

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=540&ncid=716&e=2&u=/ap/20040407/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_helicopter_crash

<snip>
BAQOUBA, Iraq - A U.S. military helicopter crashed Wednesday and was seen burning on the ground in central Iraqi city of Baqouba, where Shiite militiamen and U.S. troops were battling, a witness said. There was no immediate word on casualties.


The helicopter crashed immediately after an explosion was heard, according to an AP photographer at the site. He saw the helicopter on the ground in flames. U.S. troops closed off the site.


It was not immediately known what caused the crash.
</snip>

**CNN UPDATE - it was a "controlled" landing. Like that matters, I guess...

That might be another downed helicopter. :(

I found this on Google News http://news.google.com/ but can't get the link to open. Here is the short blurb provided:

Fierce fighting rages in restive town of Fallujah as insurgents claim to have shot down three US helicopters.

Let's hope Middle East Online (the original source) is not too reliable.

Edit: well, now it's gone.

According to CNN

...the chopper being in flames. If it was a controlled landing (i.e. autorotation), it wasn't a very good one...

They can't both be true, can they?

It's possible the autorotation (controlled landing without engine power) wasn't quite successful and the aircraft burst into flames, either on impact or while in the air from ground fire or mechanical failure...

that is standard practice, no? evac the people and blow up the helo?

it could have been damaged during the landing... a fuel leak or some such or someone set fire to the chopper after it landed.

immediately had an explosion, then flames? I guess it's controlled like the Sept 11th hijackers/pilots were controlled.

damn! weLL, gotta stay the course... fight terrra... a thousand points of Light...

Since they need to account for the casualties but can't tell the home front that Iraqis are capable of inflicting substantial losses on American soldiers.

have been credited to the Iraqis. Eyewitnesses are reporting that they saw this copter get hit with a rocket.

the "official" reports indicate that most of the crashes are due to either accidental or undetermined causes, regardless of what eyewitnesses say. I could well be wrong, but I can only remember one incident of them admitting that a helicopter was in fact shot down.

either deny the incident or claim they don't know what happened. At first they had some really funny ways to avoid even admitting that there was a crash.

But if you read the follow up stories, almost all have been caused by RPG's or small missiles.

can not always win. So said King George the Second. You can take that two ways.

An American reporter published a long article in Britain's Daily Mirror complaining that they were not allowed to report the truth about German tanks like the Panther and Tiger being better armored and gunned than American tanks, because Americans had been told that their boys had the best equipment in the world and would be horrified to learn that the Germans could shoot the crap out of American tanks before the Americans could even get in range.

There seems to be some question about the 'controlled landing' of the helicopter and it being in flames.

If a helicopter is non-recoverable, the military will get out the casualties and recover as much sensitive stuff as they can, and then they burn it with thermite.

The helicopter may have had to autorotate (a way of landing when there is no or reduced power to the blades) to a controlled crash landing, and the military may not have been able to get it out of there (these things are big, remember). They may have then lit the thermite, but it is a very bright flame (magnesium, if I remember) and doesn't look like a normal fire.

Just some information to chew on.

Intensely exothermic. Magnesium, if present, is only a fuse.

I haven't had chem in a loooong time.

I have a question- from the guardian article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3950266,00.html
<snip>
The crash came immediately after an explosion was heard, said Mohammed Adnan, an AP photographer at the site. He saw the helicopter in flames in a field near a residential neighborhood. U.S. troops closed off the site.
<snip>

Setting off thermite wouldn't cause an explosion, would it?

hit the gas tanks or the ammo, right?

In water, hydrogen is released very rapidly and then ignited.

does this chopper run on aviation fuel? that stuff can burn like the dickens.

and it sure seems you know a lot about demolitions...paging mr. Ashcroft...:)

The inflammable nature of any fuel is attributable to its vapor pressure. It's the mixture of fuel vapors and oxygen that's dangerous. Fuel in its liquid state burns only at the surface where evaporation (transition to a gaseous state mixed with oxygen) takes place. If the fuel were aerosolized, it'd be highly flammable -- virtually explosive depending on the volume and oxygen mix.

On edit: I think the typical movie scenario showing a car exploding in a crash is exaggerated for dramatic effect. The fuel tank needs to be ruptured and the fuel vaporized to cause the kind of pyrotechhics usually seen. The flames seen in airliner crashes (I'm thinking of one famous one) occurs some time subsequent to the intial impact(s) and rupturing of fuel tanks. Even the infamous Pinto 'explosions' weren't really explosions but the ignition of fuels splashed into the air from tanks ruptured in the crash.

Any reason to employ thermite wouldn't include rigid containment to the degree that an explosion would be noted. Since the explosion was noted while the chopper was still in the air, it's most likely the result of an RPG. (There'd be no reason to ignite any thermite while in the air. There'd be every reason not to, since it'd be a threat to the life of the crew.) Thermite would only be used to destroy sensitive technology or data abandoned in a hostile area. I'm not quite persuaded that thermite would be used at all in such a chopper. It's not as though the Iraqis have an industrial base that'd allow them to exploit such technology/data in any meaningful fashion.

I think an interesting (fictional) example of the use of thermite was the movie "Conspiracy Theory." :shrug: (But I'm no munitions expert.)

In "Black Hawk Down", by Mark Bowden, he describes the setting of thermite grenades in the crashed helicopters in Mogadishu, Somalia. I have also read of it elsewhere on the internet, but a quick search on google didn't produce anything.

I don't think it matters if the Iraqis would be able to exploit anything in the helicopter. Remember, this is the military- they're paranoid about information security.

training. The instructor told us this is how you get rid of a body (he was joking we thought at the time) then pop one off and put it on top of a 1/4 steel p[late which it burned through on in less than a minute.

That's news? Don't helicopters almost always come back down to earth by means of a controlled landing?

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32 minutes old:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-3950176,00.html