Early days of the Puma - returning to Odious one night. Hit the 'down' switch. Big bang, hydraulics lost which led to loss of AP. Two greens only - no nose green. Managed to get the AP back in by pulling the emergency lowering handle, which shut off the leak and restored the pressure (this action was subsequently added to the FRCs). Came to hover near dispersal. Nose leg way forward of the vertical - when the gear went down, the front of the jack blew off. No procedure then for gear malfunctions. Short of fuel so carried out a rotors turning refuel in the hover while the engineers tried to find some sandbags. They did - piled them up under the nose, shut down and didn't use rotor break. Off to the bar for a beer! Eurocopter subsequently added a restrictor to the line to reduce the pressure to that jack.