Posted: 1/13/2005 8:27:33 AM EDT
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It is over peacetime load, but in combat emerency the planning load was 22 troops with the seats out. That's packed in like a Tokyo subway. By removing the seats, you eliminate a great deal of the safety built into the design, so it's not something the US does, even in combat, because you're more likely to need the extra safety of the G-absorbing seats in combat in the first place. The biggest problem with the Blackhawk is running out of space in the cabin. Since the Columbians seem to have a habit of loading that many guys in the aircraft, that's usually an indication of an enviroment where safety is taking a back seat to just about everything. Of course, hitting the side of a mountain in fog is hard to survive no matter what, but if you're willing to forego designed safety elements, then you start being willing to fly in weather that you shouldn't be, with training that's substandard, with maitenance that's substandard, etc. It's not a direct cause of the crash, but it's this type of risk eviroment that actually lets it happen. Ross |
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Im OK, wasnt from my site, 20 troops is pretty normal, especially if they take out the internal Aux tank. We do 15 with the internal tank. This was a FMS blackhawk, with a complete Colombian Crew, not a real Plan Colombia bird which would have one Colombian and one US pilot. |
I have flown in Blackhawks, seats out, on more than one occasion. But that is too bad about the soldiers. And for them, it is not the war on drugs. In South America, many of the dominant forces in the drug industry (like FARC or the ELN) are political extremist groups (I think they are mostly left-wing; but not the same as American left or right) that took up drugs as a means of funding their civil war. For countries like Colombia, it is a civil war for control of the countryside. |
Yeah, we tested the configuration when the "A" models first came out. It's still done, but it's a risk trade-off (like everything) that isn't usually worth in peace-time, so generally we didn't like doing it as pilots. If you did do it, you did other things to offset the risk (like anything else). The problem with the Columbian Army is they are simply operating like that on a normal basis. So to them flying without the seats and 20+ guys is normal everyday ops. In that kind of command enviroment things like faulty parts, leaking engines, poor or not done maintenance, bad weather, etc. starts to become normal ops too because the risk factor isn't taken into consideration. It's like carrying ammo in your pistol. If you carry a loaded gun, there are things you do to reduce the risk of any accidents. If you don't care about being dangerous, you don't do any "risk managment" and don't bother to do anything to reduce the risk of AD's (like you leave the safety off, or your finger on the trigger, etc.) and there's a much higher risk of AD. As you pointed out, the Columbians aren't at "peacetime" though. Their risks are dictated by thier situation. Ross |
The Blackhawk was designed from the begining to eliminate the problems with the Huey. The biggest of those was engine power. In the hot and high enviroment in a UH-1H, you might be down to being able to carry only four passengers. When the UH-60 frist came out, we joked that they should have put a body the size of the Navy's CH-46 on it to take advantage of the engine power. We cubed out the UH-60A's pretty fast. The power difference between the two (Hawk and Huey) is enormous. Survivability was also built into the Blackhawk as well. The reason the wheels are on the outside of the cabin is so they shear off after a certain "G" load and don't penetrate the cabin. Aircraft components were desigen to not pentetrate the cabin space, unlike the Huey, where the transmission will come out the side and kill everyone sitting in the way. The seats were designed to stroke downward to absorb "G" forces in a crash. When you remove the seats, you've basically killed the occupants in anything but a slow descent crash. It's like seat-belts. If you don't use them, they don't do any good. Sure there's times you can't use them, but when you don't you need to do things, like better route planning, harder look at weather, harder look at manitenance, better intel, more planning details overall, training of the crew and crew mix, etc. in order to offset the higher risk you now operate at. There's always a risk factor in flying any mission. If you increase the risk factor in one area for some reason (like take out the seats to get more folks in) you need to manage the risk in other places to increase your chances of survival. Like I said, I don't think the seats would have done any good in this situation, since none of the crew survived and the pilot and co-pilot at least had seats. The thing is the enviroment that they were operating in would contribute to the risk. They took higher risks regularly, so it becomes normal ops to them. The higher risk doesn't go away, it just get's ignored. Then things like overrunning service times start to get ignored. Things like an engine that's returning back bad oil samples gets ignored. Things like pilot training gets ignored. I'm not knocking the Columbians. They're basically at war down there. That's also some shit terrain and weather to fly in if you've ever been in the like. It's just that because it is so risky, you need to take extra steps. Ross |
No Basically about it, it is a real shooting war, with 3 American Contractors still being held as POW's 2 years later. American Contractors in combat every day. Update: I was wrong, it was a Plan Colombia Bird, IE US DoS still holds the title to the aircraft, but it said Colombian Army on the side. I knew both of the pilots, and had flew with them many times before. |
 Things must have changed a lot since your day, Ross. I remember riding at least 20 troops seats out in a Blackhawk on more than one occasion. Riding in seats was a luxury for us; in three years with the 101st, I can count on one hand the number of times I rode in a Blackhawk that had troop seats in it. There ain't nothing quite like air assaulting into Peason Ridge in the back of a pitch black Blackhawk at oh-dark-thirty with 22 other smelly grunts plus crew while one of the battalion mortar teams tries to stuff an 81mm mortar tube into your left ear and a belt of 5.56mm for your SAW is slapping you in the nuts because the cheesy box came off and the guy next to you is puking his Corned Beef Hash MRE into his helmet while some shit-hot chopper driver has his grubby dickbeaters white-knuckled on the collective and the cyclic so he can do some jinkin' and jivin'..........only to hit the LZ, move to your AA, and get waxed by some cheeseball OPFOR CLF dude driving a mocked-up ZSU-23-4. Good times, I tell ya.   I was pretty hanked off that I didn't get to at least get a shot off at that ZSU from that MILES AT-4 they made me drag around. 
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It's the difference between pilot error (slamming into a mountainside at night in thick fog) and having the aircraft self-destruct in flight (V-22). The Osprey will be a spiffo aircraft once/if they get the kinks ironed out. |
Nothing (which you know). Blackhawks used to fall out of the sky for no apparent reason with alarming frequency. So did Hueys, believe it or not. The UH-1 is the opitome of reliability, but that's only because there hasn't been one square inch of that aircraft that hasn't been shot, damaged or destroyed at one time or another to learn from. When they first came out, they were the first fielded helicopter with hydraulic controls. That lead to a series of accidents that no one understood until they could figure out what was happening in the control system. Back then people were crying that a helicopter with a jet enigne and hydraulic controls would never work for the Army because it was "Too complicated". Like issuing repeaters was wrong because it would "use too much ammo". Ross |
Apparently I am out of date. We planned all our wartime missions with 22 for the hawks, but it didn't make alot of sense to remove safety devices that actually would save lives in peacetime. I suppose being at war does that, or it shows what alot of us knew back then. The UH-60 isn't big enough. There's a reason the CH-47 is being bought like crazy overseas, and a reason those Russian helicopters were so damn big. Even the USMC figured it out with the CH-46's size. The damn Blackhawk takes up as much room on the ground (though the 46's rotors stick out more) as a CH-46 because of it's tailboom, but you don't get the cabin volume. When we started the UTTAS program (the competition for the Huey replacement), they stuck to the "one squad per aircraft" idea. Which is what gave us the size limitations. The Army probably needs to think about getting bigger helicopters when it thinks of the replacement for the Blackhawk I guess. I don't like the idea of foregoing safety features that have proven to save lives just to pack twice the people than designed into an aircraft. It's like taking the armor off of a Brad to fit in more people. Yeah, wartime and all, but we put the fucking seats in there for a reason, and it wasn't comfort. Ross |
You'll get no argument from me on any of the points you brought up. To be honest, the seats weren't all THAT comfortable, but knowing you had that extra layer of protection was comforting just in case the CrashHawk decided to pull a lawn dart. 
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| Having rode around in a Black Hawk(Bawk!),I cringe everytime I hear of one crashing.Yeah,it may not be roomy,btu its a helluva E-ticket ride going NOE! BTW,when I win the big powerball,I'm gonna go buy one,hook up some big megaphones to it,and fly around advertising Chineese takeout and carwashes at 3AM. |