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kzt
"That's why you don't hear the words "amateur" and "EOD tech" in the same sentence very often."

It's fairly long, but the bright loud part is at 52 seconds.

I think that's about 15 pounds/7 kg of TNT in the round.

Also note how long it took for the dust to settle.

Raw URL http://www.liveleak.com/player2.swf?token=18f_1201000704
mfb
hahaha
WearzManySkins
Well it seems there is a new candidates for the Darwin Award of the year 2008.

I have "handled" 5" naval rounds, 155mm is even bigger.

WMS
Whipstitch
On a related topic, one of my players a few months back said this li'l gem: "Don't take Demolitions dude, you can default it."

I get giddy just thinking about the many ways things could eventually play out in the future.
Malicant
Demolitions FAIL! rotfl.gif
WearzManySkins
A 5" (127 mm)Naval round weighs in a 75 pounds, with about 60 pounds of that is explosives IIRC, a 155 mm (6.1 inch) is a larger round, so a 155mm would weigh in at over 75 pounds and have more than 60 pounds of explosives. grinbig.gif Correction one source lists the 155mm as weighing 96 pounds.

I bet this video is being to used to train EOD and the Bomb Squad teams on what NOT to do. grinbig.gif
Kanada Ten
Sad.
Erebus
You may want to warn that its somewhat graphic.

Galedeep
Seriously, any time people are killed isn't a time for laughing and making jokes.

I mean, they obviously had no idea what they were doing, but even then. They died. Not funny.
Malicant
They were outside our monkeysphere, so yeah, it is funny, for us, kind of. In a very dark way.
jago668
I'd have to disagree. That was pretty amusing. Common sense tells you not to fuck with something that might have 80lbs of explosive in it. Hell if I toss a firecracker and it doesn't go off I don't mess with it, I just turn the water hose on it and leave it alone. Reminds me I need to send that link to a couple of friends of mine, show one of them the people he'll be working around in about a month.
bibliophile20
Can we have the context of the video? (i.e. location, general info, background, etc.)

EDIT:

Between what a friend of mine and I have determined (mostly him, but he's an ex-Army gunsmith), these were coalition boys in Iraq, the image was filmed using infrared, and the crater was in excess of 20 feet in diameter. Additionally, his theory is that, as there were no buildings or other targets around that would warrant an artillery round, the round was an air burster, programmed to detonate off the ground and scatter sub-munitions over an area (so they were basically trying to dig up a metal shell full of grenades). Also, air burster artillery rounds are notoriously finicky when it comes to the detonators, because the jolt of acceleration in the barrel can be too much, knocking contacts out of skew. His theory is, one of the guys slipped, which can been seen in that last viewable instant, and the jolt of his rifle barrel against the side of the round was enough to get the contact to close and the round to detonate.

So, yes, what we have here is a beautifully illustrated case of a quartet of human beings doing something incredibly stupid, with inadequate training and about the most inappropriate tools possible under the circumstances, making the topic perfectly named.
Fix-it
QUOTE (bibliophile20 @ Feb 27 2008, 05:42 AM) *
Can we have the context of the video? (i.e. location, general info, background, etc.)


second request for context.

also, I find this sad. land mines and car bombs in general are for the spineless.
kzt
QUOTE (bibliophile20 @ Feb 26 2008, 09:42 PM) *
Can we have the context of the video? (i.e. location, general info, background, etc.)

As best as I can determine, it's in Iraq, the guys who got blown up were actually on our side. (They give the map coords, but it would be a pain to try to find it.) Iraqi milita with a convoy to judge from the radio chatter. This seems to be from a airborne drone. I don't really know more.

There is said to be a fairly relaxed attitude towards safety in most of the Arab world. "Insha'Allah"
KCKitsune
QUOTE (Erebus @ Feb 26 2008, 11:06 PM) *
You may want to warn that its somewhat graphic.


What is graphic about that video? You see the guys messing around with the ordinance and then *BOOM*. You don't see any body parts or anything gory. Those poor bastards were vaporized.
Earlydawn
Those were Iraqi army, no? I didn't watch it with audio.
WearzManySkins
Correction a 155 mm can contain up to 20 pounds of TNT/RDX explosives. Still more than enough to make body recovery a sponge job.

Since the source is from a web site that uses "Leaked" videos, unless you are current US Mil with strong connections to IRAQ the source and details be not be forthcoming.

An No it is not graphic,. like one has posted, you see them, big explosion/dust cloud, then no body parts are visible.

WMS
kzt
QUOTE (WearzManySkins @ Feb 26 2008, 08:12 PM) *
so a 155mm would weigh in at over 75 pounds and have more than 60 pounds of explosives. grinbig.gif Correction one source lists the 155mm as weighing 96 pounds.

Field Artillery rounds actually have a rather small percentage of explosives in them. I was serious in that a typical M107 155 round has a bit less than 15 pounds of TNT or CompB in it. I'd expect that it was an HE round, as a DPICM round is a base ejection round and the arming cycle is supposed to require deployment of the streamers on each grenade to arm the striker.

A little HE goes a LONG way. Much further then a certain game suggests. In the open a M107 has a lethal radius of 50 meters.

It's also possible that this was a larger IED, with the rest not seen until it exploded. I don't know. I was an artilleryman in the Army, I didn't blow craters in roads.
WearzManySkins
Agreed on the M107 but I also saw the stats on the M795, 23.8 lb of TNT and weighing approximately 103 pounds.

Now what a Iraqi Army 155mm stats are...*shrugs*

True I do not recall what types of artillery that was used under Sadam. It could have been a larger artillery round.

WMS
kzt
Iraq mostly used Warsaw Pact supplied artillery. 152mm is the typical medium round. Similar to NATO 155mm in characteristics. Artillery rounds are under huge stress in flight and have a lot of steel to keep them intact at 60,000g and 6000RPM. Modern rounds like the M795 use fancier steels and better designs to get more HE into the round IIRC. I think they also use a more powerful and yet more insensitive explosive.
WearzManySkins
Could have been a Warsaw Pact 203mm(8") projectile.

I have seen first hand what a 403mm (16") guns can do, the crater would have been larger. So it could have been a 203mm or a smaller shell with extra explosives packed in.

Wonder if the Iraqi insurgents are "cooking" the projectiles like what was done in VN, to get out the explosive and put into a more "usable" form.

WMS
DocTaotsu
I heard from an EOD tech about a year ago that they weren't, at least not on a broad scale. There's so many munitions lying around that it's easier for them to strap a bunch of them together to get a bigger blast.

Now the hairy parts of the Phillipines, they're evidently very sophisticated because they have less material to work with. They're also supposed to building much more complicated fuses and what not, homebrewing in some cases.

kzt
I've seen reports that suggest that the IED makers are running low on HE in some places. People making bombs of ANFO and such. We've blown up millions of pounds of old Iraqi ordinance and stockpiles in the last 4 years, eventually there are no more piles of artillery shells to use.
DocTaotsu
Than they'll have to turn to cooking... and that's probably not going to turn out very well for them for them in the short term. Nothing brings a smile to my face faster than the report that a bomb maker blew himself up.
knasser
A bit of warning that I was about to see four people die would have been appreciated.

QUOTE (kzt)
There is said to be a fairly relaxed attitude towards safety in most of the Arab world. "Insha'Allah"


There are probably around 400 million arabs in the world today, and your "Insha'Allah" makes me think you're talking about muslims generally in which case we're talking over well over a billion. You're going to find plenty of accidents in any population that size, though of course the human mind is more given to forming opinions based on notable incidents rather than statistical analysis.

And given that this is Iraq, you might consider how many accidents you would see amongst the USA population if that country was turned into a warzone and littered with munitions. I'm sure (if you're in the USA and from the "our side" I assume you are) that you've come across plenty of people there who would be capable of harming themselves in a similar manner. The infrastructure, organisation and economy of Iraq has been devastated. In combination with the ongoing violence, I expect qualified bomb disposal experts aren't quickly available to a lot of the population. Without knowing the circumstances, how can we say anything about why they were doing what they were doing? Looking at the tracks either side it could easily be somewhere that someone may drive over. It could be at the bottom of someone's field for all I can tell. I don't know why they were digging it out, but maybe they felt it was their duty as soldiers to remove it before they moved on.

Who knows? But if these are adult Iraqi men then they're probably married, likely have children, all of which have just lost someone they loved and depended on. Whilst I understand why someone would say we can laugh at this because it's "outside our bubble," it's not outside mine. It's that "bubble," that ability to distance ourselves from people far away that allows factions in our countries to get away with waging wars like this. If people thought for a whlie about what just happened and what it means to these people, then more of us would have tried to prevent this war and maybe we'd have succeeded. That bubble is harmful to all of us.

I understand the purpose of dark humour, I really do. We need it to get us through our own grim situations or those of people we emphasize with. When we remove the empathy, the humour is no longer dark, it's just callous.

-K.
pbangarth
Hear, hear.
WearzManySkins
QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 27 2008, 02:02 AM) *
I've seen reports that suggest that the IED makers are running low on HE in some places. People making bombs of ANFO and such. We've blown up millions of pounds of old Iraqi ordinance and stockpiles in the last 4 years, eventually there are no more piles of artillery shells to use.

The Vast amounts of ordinance that was "left" over from the previous regime,,yes vast amounts have been destroyed but what of the hidden stockpiles?

Hidden I mean taken out somewhere in the sticks, buried then GPS marked location.

Also with the influx of supplies from outside the borders, explosives ie plastique, C4, Symtex, etc will be "imported" in for use.

Yes a percentage of the bomb/IED makers injure/kill them selves while "learning" but those that live will "teach" others. Kind of a Bomb making Darwinism.

As for the why the Iraqi Forces were attempting to remove the bomb/shell/explosives in that manner, since we did not hear those instructions, that we may not know.

I have met several persons while I was in service, that if told to do something similar they would have done it. That is one reason why the US Military and I do not get along too well. I asked too many questions, and I could tell when I was being mislead/lied too.

WMS
Fuchs
Sad to see people laughing at this.
KCKitsune
QUOTE (Fuchs @ Feb 27 2008, 04:51 PM) *
Sad to see people laughing at this.


I wasn't laughing at this. I thought it was sad.

Now if it were terrorists, then I would be laughing so loud that you would hear me... no matter where in the world you are. grinbig.gif
kzt
QUOTE (knasser @ Feb 27 2008, 01:03 PM) *
A bit of warning that I was about to see four people die would have been appreciated.

5 most likely. Someone wandered over to look closely just before it blew up. Sorry, I thought it was kind of obvious from the context.
QUOTE
There are probably around 400 million arabs in the world today, and your "Insha'Allah" makes me think you're talking about muslims generally in which case we're talking over well over a billion.

Most non-Arab Moslem countries it isn't typical for every male to run outside and empty automatic weapons into the air to celebrate everything. It is in several Arab countries. Putting many thousands of bullets into the air isn't something that people who are concerned about safety do, as they will come down somewhere. Plus the commentary at the start suggests that the drone operators had seen similar casual treatment of explosives that astonished them. I'm fairly certain that is what the bit about "they tossed it into the truck bed" was about.

QUOTE
I expect qualified bomb disposal experts aren't quickly available to a lot of the population. Without knowing the circumstances, how can we say anything about why they were doing what they were doing?

Blowing it in place with a couple pounds of C4 is a logical (but still somewhat risky) approach. Prying it out of the ground with your rifles is a very not good approach, as was clearly shown. People do dumb things all the time, but this was just such a blatantly BAD idea. . . .
Fortune
QUOTE (knasser @ Feb 28 2008, 07:03 AM) *
A bit of warning that I was about to see four people die would have been appreciated.


I really do think the thread's title should have given you your first clue. wink.gif
masterofm
They should have spent edge, but then again it seemed like an extended test.... People die all the time doing dumb stuff. You can smile or not it's really anyone's choice. I personally felt kinda sorry for them, but if someone made the darwin awards for doing something stupid along the lines of that you know a lot more people would probably be laughing about it. Also I don't think those guys got vaporized as it seems there are just chunks of them and a few guns all around the crater.
Fuchs
I once had to help "clean up" an artillery practise area. We got a rudimentary instruction (15 minutes), and then were sent to collect the non-explosive metal bits, and leave the unexploded alone. Although half-buried in the earth and gravel, both types looked kind of similar, as we found out.

Out of one company's worth of recruits, 1 single recruit refused to do it after we had a few "Oh, so this thing I am carrying around on my shoulder is actually not a piece o shrapnel, but full of explosives still? Uh..." incidents. The rest, including me, was griping, yet still continued to sweep the area. In hindsight, I don't really know what I was thinking back then, or not thinking as it was the case. Probably the usual teenage stupidity having the last laugh.

Four or Five soldiers dead or maimed. Fun? I do not think so.
Rotbart van Dainig
QUOTE (knasser @ Feb 27 2008, 09:03 PM) *
I'm sure (if you're in the USA and from the "our side" I assume you are) that you've come across plenty of people there who would be capable of harming themselves in a similar manner.

Actually, there was a similar case not too long ago:
Some grunts trying to disarm an old shell in Afghanistan.

IIRC, they were from the US.
mfb
while i'm certainly not going to say that it's bad or wasteful to empathize with someone who takes it upon themselves to poke unexploded ordinance, i don't see anything wrong with laughing at the misfortune of others when you weren't ever intending on helping them anyway. don't get me wrong, those guys had it tough, but there are other tough situations on the planet and i prefer to focus on some of those.
kzt
QUOTE (Fuchs @ Feb 27 2008, 04:54 PM) *
The rest, including me, was griping, yet still continued to sweep the area. In hindsight, I don't really know what I was thinking back then, or not thinking as it was the case. Probably the usual teenage stupidity having the last laugh.

Yikes, nobody other then EOD and range maintenance was allowed in impact areas. We were once threatened with having to go into the buffer for firefighting, but not into the actual impact area ever.

The only guy I know who did stuff in an impact area traveled in an M88 replacing targets. The day they blew a track off running over an 8" round was not a lot of fun. Not only was it kind of a bad experience, but then they had to walk out of the impact area sticking to the path cleared by the tracks.
knasser
QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 27 2008, 11:07 PM) *
Most non-Arab Moslem countries it isn't typical for every male to run outside and empty automatic weapons into the air to celebrate everything. It is in several Arab countries.


So you've read a story about someone who was injured or killed by firing bullets in the air and now "arabs aren't particularly safety conscious" and "every male runs outside to empty automatic weapons in the air to celebrate everything."

You know I read that there are over 15,000 vehicle-related fatalities involving alcohol per year in the USA. Now I, coming from a culture of non-drinking and not-drinking myself, could look at that and say "every male in the US gets drunk and tries to drive home to celebrate everything" in the US and I would be a lot more justified in making that statement than you are yours, unless you want to explain to me where these 15,000 fatalities are due to someone firing a gun in the air.

Now do I go around saying "americans are drunken idiots who keep killing themselves with alcohol," and other such things? No, actually, I don't because I think it is wrong to make crass generalisations about about a race or nationality based on some statistically insignifcant behaviour / individuals. And I even had the benefit of statistics for this over your simple impressions or selective news stories. If it's wrong for me to describe americans as drunken idiots based on a few thousand of them out of the 300 million people in the USA, then it's certainly wrong for you to make a comment about the 400 million arabs in the world today because of some anecdote you read.

QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 27 2008, 11:07 PM) *
Blowing it in place with a couple pounds of C4 is a logical (but still somewhat risky) approach. Prying it out of the ground with your rifles is a very not good approach, as was clearly shown. People do dumb things all the time, but this was just such a blatantly BAD idea. . . .


Yes it was and they died because of it. I don't find these people's deaths amusing. I don't find the thought of those left behind amusing either. If you've ever lost a parent, sibling or partner, you might want to think about how it felt.

Who knows what these people were thinking or why they did it. Maybe they were ordered to, maybe they felt it was their duty as the militia to remove a dangerous object from an area where others would be before they moved on, maybe they just didn't know what it was. We know nothing about what sort of education or training these people had received.

It was a device designed to kill people. Is it that astonishing that deaths are resulting from the use of such devices? So if you want to lay blame for their deaths, I think it's pretty reasonable to place the blame on those who were responsible for it being there in the first place. If someone left a bomb in the road outside your house and someone you know died trying to remove it, I seriously, seriously doubt that you'd be saying "that was funny - my idiot neighbour/friend/son should have used a couple of pounds of C4, duh!"

So let's drop the "Har har - arabs are stupid" comments while I'm still being polite, eh? I'm a very forgiving person and I believe in peace very strongly. That doesn't mean you should try and make me angry, though.

-K.
Fuchs
QUOTE (mfb @ Feb 28 2008, 01:04 AM) *
i don't see anything wrong with laughing at the misfortune of others when you weren't ever intending on helping them anyway. don't get me wrong, those guys had it tough, but there are other tough situations on the planet and i prefer to focus on some of those.


There's a difference between focusing on something else, and laughing at someone dieing.

There's also a difference between not helping someone, and laughing at their demise.
Fix-it
QUOTE (Rotbart van Dainig @ Feb 28 2008, 01:01 AM) *
Actually, there was a similar case not too long ago:
Some grunts trying to disarm an old shell in Afghanistan.

IIRC, they were from the US.


I recall an anecdote posted here (or somewhere else), wherein the author walked up to a group of soldiers standing around in a circle. he asked them what's up, and they pointed to a round metal object lying on the ground, and said "we think it's a land mine". the author then asked them why they were all standing around it. this one ended happily, as the object ended up being an air filter for a diesel engine. which is probably even worse, when you think about it.
mfb
QUOTE (Fuchs)
There's a difference between focusing on something else, and laughing at someone dieing.

There's also a difference between not helping someone, and laughing at their demise.

not to me. people die (or worse) every day. if i'm honest with myself--and i try very hard to be--then i don't feel anything for the vast majority of them. and if i don't feel anything for their death, it would be dishonest of me to feel anything for being amused by the manner in which they died.

if i were completely without hypocrisy, i also wouldn't feel anything for the people i do try to help. i suppose i'm lucky enough to not be that inhuman.
Riley37
Kzt wrote "There is said to be a fairly relaxed attitude towards safety in most of the Arab world. "Insha'Allah"

and Knasser wrote some comments in response.

My take on the video would be about the same if the guys were US military in Iraq, US military elsewhere, drunk American college kids, Iraqi "coalition" (whom some might call quislings), Iraqi resistance, or anyone else. I did NOT hear kzt say that the guys deserved death because they were Arab (if they were), because they were Muslim (if they were), or anything like that. I imagine that kzt would scoff at white Christian Americans who tried amateur EOD.

So far as I know, what kzt actually said - not extensions or extrapolations or exaggerations - is true in most less-industrialized cultures; my experience in Latin America suggests similar patterns elsewhere. Cultures in which most/many people have the resources to take one's time, be methodical, use disposable tools, call experts, etc. have lower risk tolerance. In cultures in which resources, time and experts just aren't fraggin' available, people tend to do their best and then pray. Many Arabs who are Muslim (not all Arabs are Muslim or vice versa) say "Insha'Alla" much as many Spanish-speakers say "Que sera, sera" and many English-speakers say "Shit happens". There should be an equivalent phrase in Or'Zet, used a lot by those orks (not all orks) who live more at the mercy of fate and luck, than by their control over their own lives. There are fatalities in Mexico City on New Year's Day caused by rounds falling down that were shot upwards in celebration. Probably same in Barrens.

All that said, my sympathy for those guys is a lot less than my sympathy for a careful driver killed by a drunk driver, because in any of the scenarios that Knasser describes, those guys did not have to fraggin' rock the item back and forth, and since the standing guy wasn't helping, he sure didn't have to stay nearby. Better to post a warning (preferably one that doesn't rely on literacy), or stay there to guide people away from it, or really, anything other than yank all together on the item. I'm gonna speculate wildly, and non-PC-ly, that some macho guys of ANY race, religion or ethnicity, tend to say "I'm sure I can handle this", they tend to find out the hard way, and the question that interests me is how to reduce the damage to the rest of us. Such as the widows and orphans.
Tzitzimine
Ouch. The only thing I'm wondering is "What the hell they were thinking.". I mean really they had big brass ones. I was in Iraq and looked down one afternoon to notice directly below my "member", stuck in dried mud, was a cluster bomblet. I tiptoed so lightly I was almost levitating. I wonder if the 5th guy walking up, right before the 155 goes off, was coming to tell them, "Hey guys, this is probably a bad idea..."

Also, as a bit of trivia, the video comes from the CPG in an AH-64A Apache. It's also not IR but TV Video.

R.I.P.
b1ffov3rfl0w
QUOTE (kzt @ Feb 27 2008, 07:07 PM) *
Most non-Arab Moslem countries it isn't typical for every male to run outside and empty automatic weapons into the air to celebrate everything. It is in several Arab countries. Putting many thousands of bullets into the air isn't something that people who are concerned about safety do, as they will come down somewhere.


I would just like to point out that in my country, which is not for the most part Arab nor Muslim, it's not uncommon for the last words of men to be "Hey y'all, watch THIS".

kzt
QUOTE (b1ffov3rfl0w @ Mar 8 2008, 11:26 PM) *
I would just like to point out that in my country, which is not for the most part Arab nor Muslim, it's not uncommon for the last words of men to be "Hey y'all, watch THIS".

I'm told somewhere there is a videotape of a Miami traffic helicopter pilot who said that right before he did an inside loop to impress another pilot. Well, actually part of an inside loop, when the main rotor chopped off the tail rotor he departed from controlled flight. I bet the other pilot was impressed.... Sadly, he had the traffic reporter on board, but at least nobody on the ground was killed by his idiocy.
Jhaiisiin
QUOTE (kzt @ Mar 9 2008, 12:47 AM) *
I'm told somewhere there is a videotape of a Miami traffic helicopter pilot who said that right before he did an inside loop to impress another pilot. Well, actually part of an inside loop, when the main rotor chopped off the tail rotor he departed from controlled flight.

Umm... How? The main rotor and tail rotor of a helicopter can't even touch, let alone have one chop the other off during a maneuver. If that happened, then either the tail buckled and sent the tail rotor forward, or the main rotor came off and went back after the tail. Either way, I'd like to see a link to the story to see what happened...
Vegetaman
QUOTE (Whipstitch @ Feb 26 2008, 10:00 PM) *
On a related topic, one of my players a few months back said this li'l gem: "Don't take Demolitions dude, you can default it."

I get giddy just thinking about the many ways things could eventually play out in the future.


Oh the fun you could have! rotfl.gif grinbig.gif
kzt
QUOTE (Jhaiisiin @ Mar 10 2008, 08:00 AM) *
Umm... How? The main rotor and tail rotor of a helicopter can't even touch, let alone have one chop the other off during a maneuver.

Helicopters have many ways of killing the unwary. Main rotors are very flexible. Loading in high G maneuvers makes it flex. If it flexes enough it cuts into the tail boom. Then the tail rotor falls off. Like these cases

https://safecopter.arc.nasa.gov/Pages/Colum...lade_Strike.pdf
"Tail-boom strikes
Chopping off the tail boom with a blade is an all-too-frequent occurrence. Most often this type of accident happens as the helicopter makes a hard vertical touchdown or a run-on landing following autorotation. There are two contributing factors in these accidents. The blades keep on coming down even after the fuselage has stopped, and the sudden nosedown motion following the contact of aft-mounted wheels or the back of skids makes the pilot naturally want to pull the stick back to counteract it. The possible results are shown in the figure."


http://www.timesdaily.com/article/20080111.../243529972/1011
"The tail boom had separated about 1 foot aft of the tail boom attach point. That separation exhibited crushing damage, consistent with ground impact overstress separation. The aft section of tail boom separated about 2 feet aft of the horizontal stabilizer. The aft tail boom separation point exhibited cutting damage from left to right, which was consistent with main rotor blade strike damage. The aft portion of the tail boom, upper portions of the left vertical fin, and tail rotor assembly were found approximately 150 feet southeast of the main wreckage. The forward end of the tail cone also exhibited left to right damage consistent with a main rotor blade strike. Numerous pieces of tail boom shards and a damaged section of tail rotor drive shaft were found in an arc from east to south, about the same distance from the main wreckage as the aft tail cone and tail rotor assembly. Among the shards was a partial piece of tail rotor drive shaft, and two pieces of the upper left vertical fin, which had been cut from left to right, consistent with main rotor blade contact. Both main rotor blades were found in the wreckage, and had separated about 3 feet outboard of the rotor hub. They were partially burned and exhibited leading edge damage and red paint transfer, consistent with one or more tail boom strikes."
mfb
heh, yeah. i used to be in an Apache unit. helicopters can be considered to be strong support for the idea that god did not intend man to fly.
Jhaiisiin
Thanks for the clarification. I knew the rotors flexed (in some cases, a HUGE amount, which is why the practice of ducking when heading for the chopper started), I was just unclear from your post info on exactly how the main rotors severed the tail rotors. Cutting through the tail boom makes sense though. Again my thanks. smile.gif

EDIT: Yeah, but Apaches (unless I heard wrong) *can* perform the loops with relative safety... only helicopter that can unless my info is outdated (which it could be... not sure if the comanche ever hit the front lines... it was supposed to be able to do everything and more that the Apache did)
mfb
yeah, they can. as evidenced by some of the links on that page, though, i'm not sure they're the only choppers that can.
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