Brother Dixson,
That reminds me of a story told by a friend who flew H-21's out of the Washington DC area during his Army days.
The short version is the H-21 Unit he was assigned to at Fort Belvoir was tasked with the emergency evacuation of key personnel from the Pentagon to a Navy Ship that was positioned not far from the Pentagon....should the balloon go up and nuclear war was imminent.
He told of taking off from the Pentagon on a practice flight as part of a Training Op.....and just after takeoff having experienced an engine failure....performing an autorotation into a rather large grassy field....and as the nose wheel dropped to the ground, hidden in the tall grass was an open Man Hole, into which the nose gear quite unfortunately dropped right inside.....resulting in the tall spindly front gear snapping right off and causing the aircraft to flop down on its nose. He said it remained up right and not a lot of damage was done. He seemed miffed that despite doing a text book response to the engine failure fate intervened to place that open man hole exactly where the nose gear came to earth and thus undo all of his good airmanship.
