Originally Posted by
Thud_and_Blunder
As for the aircraft at Odiham decoupling on lifting to the hover (remember it well, it was on the first day of Chinook groundschool for my course) - at least the Chinook had fuel disconnect switches available in the cabin (as operated by the good Sqn Ldr as he departed the airframe). I believe that a CH53/ Sikorsky S65 variant that suffered a heavy landing which caused the disc to droop so far as to turn the cockpit into a cabriolet had no such feature, which meant that the aircraft had to be left turning and burning until the fuel supply was exhausted.
That was an S61 on a vessel in the East Shetland Basin - I think the tail wheel slipped off the deck (or they missed it) and the instinctive forward cyclic took the roof off. The pax and co-pilot stayed on the vessel and captain went and sat on the water until the fuel ran out. There are photos online of it (but can't find them)