Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
The problem here is that two helicopters are being forced to fly in close formation with each other. They are so ugly that they repel each other, so sometimes the shaft breaks.
The shaft certainly has broken on an RAF Chinook, at Odiham. Thankfully the aircraft was in the low hover and the occupants escaped intact. Mind you, everything else broke, too. The pilot told me that after it fell to the ground like a railway carriage, he naturally reached up to shut the engines down and the engine controls had departed, along with the cockpit roof, which was also missing.
Less happily, a fatal to a British Airways Chinook in 1986 -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_B..._Chinook_crash, and the report available at
https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/2-19...-november-1986
And to a US Army Chinook in Germany too in 1982 -
http://www.chinook-helicopter.com/hi.../74-22292.html