IAF Longbow crashes

Military aircraft accidents/mishaps.
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by shocktroop » 24 Jul 2006, 20:54

An IAF AH-64I crashed in northern Israel killing the 2 pilots on board.
At first it was thought that the helicopter hit an electric wire but this option was cancelled because the helicopter was flying much higher that the electric wires.
Another option was was that the helicopter was hit by Hezbollah fire, but this option was also cancelled because there was no reports of the Hezbollah firing any missiles at the helicopters.
The option that the helicopter crashed because of a technical failure is now being investigated.

An eyewitness that was in the area said:
"I was in my farm, and I went out to see the helicopter. There were two helicopters, one of them fired missiles towards Lebanon. I called one of my workers to come and see the helicopters. As my worker came out of the farm, I saw sparks coming out of one of the helicopters. Everything lasted about 2 to 3 minutes. Suddenly that helicopter started spinning violently as it was falling towards the ground. I called the police to tell them that a helicopter crashed or was shot down by Hezbollah fire."

You can watch a video (in Hebrew) on this website: (Just scroll down until you see a small screen and press play.)
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART1/453/789.html


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by Guysmiley » 24 Jul 2006, 21:16

There aren't many parts on an Apache that will bring it down when they fail. Assuming it wasn't in "dead man's corner" you usually have autorotation as an option. If there were sparks coming out of the chopper (not IR flares, but sparks) I would venture a guess of catastrophic transmission failure, which removes autorotation as an option. Ouch.


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by shocktroop » 25 Jul 2006, 19:42

They anounced on the news today that another option that the Longbow crashed could be because of friendly fire from a new Israeli AA system that might have shot down the Longbow by mistake. This option is now being investigated aswell.


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by DeepSpace » 25 Jul 2006, 23:30

According to what I heard it wasn't a new AA system, but an MLRS fire, that somehow hit the Saraf.



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