Originally Posted by
The Sultan
In the top photo in post #141 four blades look relatively intact. One blade (the one pointing "down" is only partially there (you can see more spar than afterbody and ever then the blade is short). A blade failure could easily rip the rotor, swashplate etc. out of the aircraft relatively intact.
If you watch the video of the falling rotor you will see that all 5 blades are there and seem to have still their full length. The Rotor is drifting down in balance. So in this accident this probably wasn't the case.