Originally Posted by
JohnDixson
LW, it doesn’t behave like a tail rotor servo hardcover: they aren’t going very fast at all and that tail rotor has a lot of thrust….what I’m saying is that at the speed in the clip, a servo hardcover would result in either a ship going sideways or if slower than say 45, doing a spin around the main shaft axis..
Thanks. There was a seahawk accident in 89 at North Island that began with the aircraft at about 100 kts straight and level, between 300 and 500 feet, and the TR thrust failed ... took the crew a bit to figure out the trouble since at that airspeed there's some streamlining, then as they slowed it began to swap ends after they ran out of pedal. They took off pitch, did the 'not quite an auto' cut gun and ended up with a very firm landing just south of Point Loma in the water. (Pilot in left seat got knocked out when his forehead hit cyclic, Right Seat pilot lived (seat full stroke, but still plenty of back injuries) so 'got the engines off a little high' is probably what happened and why they hit the water that hard.
From the surviving pilot's various briefs, the nose movement (slow at first and then pitch becoming in issue rather soon) reminds me of what we see in skadi's video - but their situation is complicated by being near/over a built up area. The Seahawk guys were over water so the "auto now" response was (from our training) more or less done once they realized "loss of thrust" -- had they gotten the engines off a second or two later, both of them might have gotten out.
As I watch this video, the increasing amplitude of nose pitch suggests to me that the power (or some power) was still on, even if reduced from forward flight, as the pilots were not confident in an auto as the answer and tried to fly it down to the ground (and avoid the dwellings in the foreground).
But that's a guess; could have been other stuff going on.