Many years ago I knew a wonderful man who was a Squadron Leader on Puma helicopters at a secret airbase near Basingstoke. He was teaching a "refresher" course on some subject or other and the issue of his crash in NI came up. Pardon me if the details are errant, time is no friend of memory.
He was flying an operation out of Aldergrove in a Puma with a left seat pilot and crewman and had recently dropped a patrol in a rural area. They were leaving the drop off point at low level and slow speed, (<70kts), when he experienced a tail rotor failure. The flip cards regarding tail rotor failures for the Puma were all a bit "try this" but the conventional wisdom was that if you were going faster than 70kts then the tail pylon should be sufficient to maintain heading and you should find a runway and do a running landing. Fine, but he was going slower than 70kts and the resulting yaw at low level was about to crash his aircraft. The actions to be carried out below 70kts required the pilot to carry out a complete shutdown of both engines which requires a minimum of 10 actions if I remember correctly, (it's been more than 20 years). He decided that the danger was sufficient that he would circumvent the procedure and simply pulled the two fuel shutoff levers. A thoroughly expedient solution to a rather urgent problem. With the lack of torque he regained directional control of the aircraft made a rolling landing in Riley's somewhat marshy bottom field. The marsh conspired against him and the aircraft turned on it's side and beat itself to death with the remaining energy in the head. The upshot was three crew walking away and an airframe that I believe was only Cat3. The BOI castigated him on the grounds that his shutdown of the engines was improper. I really believe that he was somewhat bitter about that experience and he made a statement that has stuck with me ever since. He said "If you are ever in a crash you walk away from get back into the cockpit when you can, pull out your flip cards and place all the switches and levers in pleasing and eyecatching positions before the investigators get there".
A long story with no apparent purpose? Not really, the moral of the story is quite clear: It's their airframe, they can do with it as they please including telling their pilot how they want him to act. Failure to do so, (even if you are right), may result in disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.
Sir, if you are reading this, you know who you are...
