There were several other bizarre incidents involving rotor blades. In the early 50s a marine HRS (S 55) landed and per base orders the mechanics had to fold the blades. The blade on the left side had to be flipped upside down in order to fit the blade into the saddle on the side of the tail cone. When they flipped it over, it broke off. The fault was traced back to a woman working in the blade shop who was removing excess bonding material using a Xacto knife. In the process of removing the material she cut into the anodized film on the spar and it set up a stress riser. At the time of the incident I was crewing an HO4 S (S 55) on an Icebreaker in Lake Michigan. We were ordered to not fly until a Sikorsky rep and an engineer could inspect our blades. When they performed the inspection they found that one of our blades was effected with the scribe mark. They ground it out and we were authorized to fly back to our base. When we got there we scrapped the blade.
On another occasion several years later a Coast Guard HO3 S (S 51) was dispatched to a rescue mission off of Grand Isle, Louisiana. On the first pass to hoist two fishermen they hit a guy wire that supported the mast. When they landed, they inspected the blade and discovered a knick in the leading edge of the spar. They burnished it out in accordance with the MM and made two more recoveries. When they got back to base, they found that the knick had developed into a crack that almost radiated to the rear of the spar. They cut that section of the blade off and sent it to Sikorsky with a thank you note from the crew.
A TV crew that was on an American SAC base recorded the most bizarre incident of all. A crew was walking away from a B 52 that had just landed and the camera caught them as they left the aircraft. They didn’t see it but the camera did. The left wing broke off at the root and dropped to the ground. The crew turned around and was horrified. I would imagine at least one of them had to change his underwear when he got back to his quarters.
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The Cat