Hi Shawn
Well you are right of course - and what is better than falling from a great height with no rotor is to follow the flight manual when it says Land Immediately, even if you don't like the look of the sea. Ditching under control in a wild sea is moderately survivable, falling with no rotor is not! But then again if the pilots thought that in reality they had 30 mins and the Land Immediately was just some certification arse covering...
chopjock - I think it might be a problem of scalability. On the Super Puma family the freewheels (sprag clutch) are after the first stage of reduction and run aroung 8000 rpm (from memory!) and still give the occasional problem, but by the time the rpm is reduced to 265 for the rotor drive, the torque is massive. I am not sure that its feasible to design a sprag clutch that would take the torque, and of course it would have to be more reliable than current transmissions (say <1 failure every 3 million flight hours) - it would be rather embarrasing to lose drive to the main rotor whilst the tail rotor was still working, and with you over that raging sea...
HC