PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Parachute for Choppers!!!
View Single Post
Old 27th September 2024 | 12:49
  #41 (permalink)  
SLXOwft
5 Anniversary
 
Joined: Apr 2020
Posts: 1,978
Likes: 376
From: Hampshire
Those of us of a maturer age may remember the Mannheim airshow crash in 1982 of a Chinook carrying parachutists.

On 11 September 1982, a CH-47C Chinook helicopter from the Coleman Barracks-based 295th Assault Support Helicopter Company was carrying skydivers from France, Germany and Wales when it plummeted 600 feet to the ground during an air show marking Mannheim's 375th anniversary. Forty-six people were killed, including seven U.S. troops. Five were Chinook crewmembers, while two others were American Forces Network soldiers assigned to cover the jump.
There is at least one company that will take your money should you wish to jump out of its helicopter over the Alps. Personally having confidence in the skills of pilot next to me / upfront to safely arrest descent by autorotation was enough, if that wasn't possible I suspected the cab would be probably too low to jump successfully or if high enough to jump and not in autorotation experiencing forces that would prevent manual egress. There were investigations by the US Army into using parachutes to escape from an autorotating helicopter in the '60s, the jumps were all successful but some jumpers' bodies were rotated by differential airflows close to the airframe during the first second of jumping before attaining a stable descent.

Addition: I just came across this old Rotorheads thread Parachute for Choppers!!!

It includes the following from ShyTorque:

Baling out? Used to be an RAF requirement to carry chutes in helis if going above a certain altitude (10,000ft?) - they once suffered a catastrophic fire in a helicopter (magnesium skinned Wessex I think it was) that burned out before it landed in autorotation.

However, I went completely off the idea of baling out as soon as I read the abandonment drill in the Flight Reference Cards for the Whirlwind 10.

There was a caveat at the bottom of the same FRC page which said words to the effect that "Warning: objects jettisoned from the aircraft in autorotative flight may contact the main rotor blades".

Last edited by SLXOwft; 27th September 2024 at 13:31. Reason: spelling
SLXOwft is offline  
Reply