Just read back a few pages and found this bit:
In a 1981 Australian crash for which Bell is being sued, the Australian military tried to determine why a helicopter crew chief was unable to parachute to safety.
Investigators suggested that he may still have been shaken because of a troubling flight in the same helicopter the week before. He may have frozen in shock when -- after the mast bumping occurred -- the rotor blade came through the cockpit and decapitated the pilot sitting in front of him.
"In this accident, the visual scenes confronting him would have been horrific," the investigators said, noting the crew chief had up to 12 seconds to escape. "This, coupled with (his) already high state of anxiety, may well have been sufficient to freeze him in a state of immobile terror."
First I have heard of this finding, and it was an incident I was intimately involved with - it was my UH-1B, but a qualified test pilot was flying it, to try to find why it had nosed over in flight a week before, when the other pilot was flying it. All on board wearing parachutes for the test. The aircraft had been through 2 major servicings after the incident but no cause was found.
On this tragic day, though, a control cable for the T/R, (which in the B model is routed beside the drive shaft) came off its pulley and contacted the drive shaft, and got caught up and wrapped around it. T/R taken to an extreme pitch setting, made contact with the small loop on the vertical fin, and chopped about 4" off the end of the blade. The whole T/R gearbox was now greatly unbalanced, and tore itself out of the fin.
Losing T/R thrust, and 30kg from 30' back, caused a big yaw and a sharp nose down, the mast had two big bumps and the rotor separated, blade came through left cockpit, killing test pilot, cutting out left side of cabin, and removing tailboom before the lot free-fell and tumbled from 1200', landing inverted.
Other pilot still strapped in right seat, undid seatbelt but floated in zero g over the back of his seat, the crewman on a monkeybelt was also unable to move in the conditions, and had finally adopted the crash position. Both were found on top of the other in the wreckage.
The idea that he had 12 seconds to escape in a freefall from 1200' is ridiculous, and the cabin was twisting and in zero-g, making it difficult to think which way is up.
I had flown that aircraft on its previous flight and was unable to find any fault with it, which is why the test pilot was called in - and it was an unrelated problem that got them. No time to do anything, it all happened in less than 2 seconds. The weird thing was, all the old-timer B-model pilots who later popped up to say, "Oh yeah, those Bravos used to nose over quite often, we never worked out why."