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I've been involved in a few bird strikes. My favorite:
Night vision goggle hop working with some Navy SEALS. We were doing the flight test of the Navy's HH-60. The mission was to fly out of Pax River NAS with the SEALS to Fort AP Hill, insert the SEALS, loiter for an hour low over the Potomac and return to extract.
Great flight, very challenging low work...the tactics and timing are very precise but we hit our marks and the flight came off near perfect.
We get back to the flight line and shut down around 0200.
Since I was the aircraft commander, I head to maintenance to fill out all the paperwork. My co-pilot and the Plane Captain (PC) start the post flight inspection.
I make it about 40 steps from the 60 when the PC calls out to me, "LT, you got to come see this!"
The inlets for the T700 jet engines that power the helo are high on the 60, one on each side. The inlet runs about three feet.
Inside the left inlet are three blood streaks, each about three inches in diameter.
We had flown into a flock of small birds without ever seeing them on the goggles!
What saved the motor was a device called the inlet particle separator (IPS) that is meant to take trash that get sucked into the engine during unrefined area landings and expel it before it hits the compressor section. The IPS is a great design!
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1996 FJ80.
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