Rear Rotor Departure

I was 'in country' in 1969 but I don't remember a rear rotor departing in flight and it is the sort of thing one would remember. The nearest I can remember and it is from memory since it didn't happen in my squadron, was an incident where about 6 feet of a rotor blade departed in flight causing an 'in flight' disintegration, killing all on board. Enough of the blade was recovered to see that the failure was caused by a bullet strike that cut away part of the vertical face of the spar, fatally weakening it. The hole had been taped over. Whoever had done that did not realize that the spar had been hit, not just the box behind the spar. I would estimate March/April timeframe

It is hard to tell what actually happens in an accident, it all happens so fast. And eyewitnesses are often the least reliable.

I cannot think of any reason why an incident such as this would be swept under the rug because a commander was relieved in the field. Where's the connection? If there was a problem with the airplane that wouldn't affect the other incident one way or another. If he was killed in the crash there is still no reason not to investigate.

Rear rotor separation

Hey John,
Maybe this was a station 410 failure in flight. This could appear to a non-helicopter person as a rotor failure, possibly? What do you think?:confused:
Joe

In Flight Breakup

The station 410 separation was not a failure of the structure. In the early days it was where the airframe would break if something else failed. By 1969, the strengthening program had been done on all H-46 and the airframe failed at other locations when something went wrong. As I mentioned the only in flight breakup that occured when I was 'in country' was a blade failure caused by undetected bullet damage.

I've never seen an in flight disintegration of a helicopter (Thank God) and I don't want to. But everything happens so fast that for an eye witness, even an expert, to be able to reliably say exactly what happened is almost impossible. Accident investigators deduce what happened by very systematic analysis. In one accident investigation I took part in, we had more than 25 eye witnesses, all Marines, none of whom had any vested interest in the result of the investigation. All of them were telling what they believed to be exactly what they saw. At the end of the testimony you had to wonder whether they all saw the same accident. Some of the evidence was directly contradictory. Some of it contravened the Laws of Physics which made it easy to eliminate. We ended up making a matrix with the observers down one side and the incidents across the other. If only one person saw it, it almost certainly did not happen; two people, maybe; three or more, most likely.

I was at the accident site within an hour of the accident and was trying to make some sense of what I was being told. I was approached by a young Marine who said, very diffidently,

"Sir, I took some photos of the bird taking off, would they be of any use to you. I'm sorry but I didn't get any of the crash".

I couldn't believe my ears, would they be of any use, they only showed us exactly how the accident happened. My voice must have been shaking as I said to him that the film he had in his camera was priceless, where was his CO, I needed a statement from him and his fellow Marines testifying that he had photographed the actual airplane that crashed. That doesn't happen very often but when it does it's a Godsend.

I looked up all the incidents in early 1969 on KIA and this is the incident I mentioned above. Seems to fit. But that accident was certainly investigated. I don't know about the relieving of the CO, there is no reason why I should.

Incident Date 690411 CH-46A 153332+ YK-19

Meeks Jr, Charles Henry SGT Gunner HMM-364 690411
Barnhart, Beverly Lee SSGT Crew HMM-364 690411
Barnes, Laurie Eugene 1stLT Aircraft Commander HMM-364 690411
Bosbery, Donald Charles 1stLT Copilot HMM-364 690411

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BARNES LAURIE EUGENE : 289384277 : USMC : 1stLT : O2 : 7564 H-53: 25 : MC ARTHUR : OH : 19690411 : Air Loss Crash Land : Aircraft Commander : body recovered : Quang Nam (DaNang) :03 : 19440111 : Cauc : Protestant/married : 27W : 054
BARNHART BEVERLY LEE : 536321016 : USMCR :SSGT : E6 : 6351 : 32 : WENATCHEE : WA : 19690411 : Air Loss Crash Land : CrewChief : Quang Nam (DaNang) :14 : 19361022 : Cauc : Protestant/married : 27W : 054

BOSBERY DONALD CHARLES : 557627271 : USMC : 1stLT : O2 : 7562 (H-46) : 24 : DALY CITY : CA : 19690411 : Air Loss Crash Land : Copilot : body recovered : Quang Nam (DaNang) :02 : 19440915 : Cauc : Protestant/married : 27W : 054

MEEKS CHARLES HENRY JR : 442443697 : USMCR :SGT : E5 : 6311 : 23 : LOS ANGELES : CA : 19690411 : Air Loss Crash Land : Gunner : Quang Nam (DaNang) : 03 : 19460315 : Negro : Protestant/single : 27W : 060

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Comments on Incident:
Catastrophic Blade Failure - The accident resulted from the failure of one of the three forward rotor blades due to metal fatigue. When the one blade failed it produced enormous unbalanced load conditions on the forward rotor head and forward transmission causing them to be literally torn from the aircraft. During this disintegration process, some of the debris impacted the aft rotor system and pylon and it too was torn from the helicopter resulting in the catastrophic crash. Information provided by John L. Lane, Cpl. USMC; Richard Bianchino, LtCol. USMC(Ret); Larry W. "Slick" Britton, LtCol. USMC(Ret)

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"A" model?

153332 was an Alpha model?? I thought the 153's were all "D" models....
Joe