Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
I was based at Odiham in 1979, prior to the RAF taking delivery of its first Chinooks. The US Army had a temporary detachment of them up at the airfield (although I seem to remember them being grounded for a while due to a fleet safety check being required).
I was queuing in the local village butchers shop when a couple of them flew over, rattling the windows. The old lady in front of me said in a very loud voice “I’m so glad those noisy things aren’t based here….”
”Oh dear!” thought I.
IIRC It was a combining box fault.... I say fault, because it was I was led to believe poor maintenance, the shafts that plug into the box were designed to be rotated and when the correct phasing was attained they would spring in and I think a 5/16 bolt held it in place.
Some of the US military were rotating them to where they thought it should be, then as the shafts had a flange on them used a bar against a frame to force them in and put the bolt in, this caused an enormous amount of strain on the bolt and one let go, dephasing the rotors which hit then sailed through the fuselage decapitating a crewman.
The US decided it was the bolt intially and they decided a bigger bolt was the fix, the rep reamed the bolt holes on two at Odiham with it in a drill! promptly wrecking two boxes before the crews stopped him doing the third. Two sat there for ages until the boxes were replaced.
That is what I was told at the time.
One of them had the oleo's stuck at full extension on one side and sat on the ground at an odd angle.