The birds in my Guard unit back when I was in, were alot of Nam era units. UH1s and OH6s. Always was amazed at the amount of patches on them. I was a 68G (Airframe Repair) at the time. Still have nightmares about Huey windscreen replacement....

At least I wasn't getting shot at. Those Army Helos sure are Spartan rattlecans, aren't they?

Done the same with my USAR team. Incredible experience.

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The huey and most aircraft skin is about as thick as the aluminum used on a pop can.
As for appliances on board, we had a stove to heat the C rations if,,,if we had time to eat.
As we shut down the engine, we tossed the C can up in the exhaust stack, they got heated pronto, when we had time,, not usually.

In the civilian world, time for components gets fudged. (TBO)
I have seen several A/C with the hour meter hooked to a switch of sorts.
One was directly wired to the light switch, so the meter did not run until that set of lights was turned on.
The Military I knew, the maintenance for our choppers' schedules was strict and rigid, even in the most hostile times.
They had the money for it.
No one there was looking at the spreadsheet of profits and bottom line.
We had enough to be concerned about without the constraints of getting the last minute or hour out of the parts.
That's the big difference between military and civilian.
What most people do not know is - most helicopters are a box of parts neatly stacked together, looking like someone's pride and joy.
But, almost every part has a time sheet attached to it, with the clocking ticking and is supposed to get replaced at that point (TBO) time B4 overhaul.
In essence, it is on a rented schedule.
Robinsons are the worst as they even have a shelf life as it times out every 10 or 12 years, the chopper goes back for a complete Overhaul.
That's pretty spendy!
The only chopper I know that does not have a lot of time parts on it is the Hiller C Raven. Lots of the parts are on condition.
A very economical truck!

What would be the number of hours flown by a helicopter pilot, such as this pilot? I think I read he had 450 hours? Is that typical? How does that compare to an airplane?

He had 450 as of his medical in Sept, and 700+ at the time of the accident. Probably lots of flying, just short hops.

^^ It probably doesn't matter, as that looked like a structural failure of some sort.
No amount of anything was going to save that chopper if the hole rotor assembly left the platform.
With "mast bump", the Main shaft "mast" that has the rotor head on top, shears off.
Transmission and related parts would stay behind in the A/F.
The few blurred pics I have seen looks like the whole assembly left, , leaving just the engine behind.

Considering this was the Siemens CEO, his wife, and kids on vacation, I doubt it was a shady fly by night helicopter tour operation. Very sad story, I’ve suggested a helicopter tour on multiple family vacations to various spots. Always been shot down by my wife though, maybe for the better?

I remember couple of our pilots talking about filling up a C- rat can with dirt or sand and fuel. Basically making a Sterno out of it to heat stuff up.

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The helo company's operational history does raise some questions...

People have very mixed feelings about helicopters. I’ve always wanted to ride in one but I know people who would not be caught dead in one.

Friend’s of mine who flew them in Vietnam (sadly pretty much all of those guys have died) when asked about flying them, said
I mis those guys and the occasional story they would tell about their time flying.

One of my best friends was a FAC pilot in Vietnam. Some amazing stories of real heroes that seldom get heard...

The corollary to, "They Beat the Air into Submission" is that they are so ugly the Earth rejects them.

I have found that accurate.

Years and years ago, I bought and read every book that came out after the Vietnam war that was written by a grunt or pilot. Fascinating stuff. What they did with those things...

There is nothing much more exciting than having GREEN streaks coming at ya!!
Flying along, inserting troops, having a nice combat day, flying in , out under the jungle, minding our own business, and all of a sudden??
Well all of a sudden someone yells "TAKEN FIRE!" The VC get all mad and starts firing their machine guns and AK47 at us !
No reason at all.!
Which of course is a trail of green streaks, hopefully just going past ya!
Which sometimes kind of made a lot of holes in stuff.
The green being VC tracers and ours were bright orange.
Just so we knew who was who to keep it all fair. In love and war.......LOL

Viet Nam was the first war fought with helicopters, AFAIK. One of my oldest friends was stationed at a helicopter base in ‘Nam, boy does he have stories when you can coax them out of him. He’s not a big mouth.

He’s been on them when they were downed by gunfire and lived to tell about it. Also stories about sharks being in the water when they wanted to go surfing, so they flew low over them and shot them up until they got the message. :)

Not to derail this, (it deserves its own thread), but “Viet Nam in HD” on The Military Channel is amazing and involves helicopters nonstop.

Too belabor the point, we that was over there in the NAM have seen just about every kind of helicopter crash / wreck possible.
I could post endless pix.
But to the main point here in this thread, once they pull up the transmission M/R assembly out of the river,,, they will figure out what went wrong.
The huge point is to make sure it is not something that will repeat itself with some component as they all age.
I am not at all knowing how strong a main rotor break is ,, as we never had them; it was a Navy thing.
But, they did have a disk brake thing on some as an option and do on most helicopters if wanted.
Hopefully, someone did not yank it?
IDK if it is even possible.

At full rpm, the brake handle would pretty much have to be hung on like a pull up, to have an effect strong enough to stop the rotor enough to break the gearbox or mounts.

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