Footage of Blackhawk down in Fiji

[OZBUSDRIVER]

Do not know what the Coroner is playing at with the Blackhawk crash. Release of very graphic Navy footage doesn't show Army Av in a very good light.

No reason is given, just the footage which shows the Hawk very nose down and high sink rate. One hell of a bounce, broken back and over the side.:uhoh

[blueloo]

Nine MSN has it:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=106036

[OZBUSDRIVER]

oops, went the coroner route because of civilian head. Just the same, if it is a military board of inquiry, why let the footage out into the public domain?

Politics? Fear of perception of cover-up? I believe that yes the footage should be made public, AFTER the release of the board's findings along with an explaination of the event.

I have a personal view re-Army Av over the RAAF rotary wing squadrons. However, this release of footage before the enquiry is completed is not just!

[UNCTUOUS]

just the footage which shows the Hawk very nose down and high sink rate. One hell of a bounce, broken back and over the side.:uhoh

If that animation of what happened on the stern of Kanimbla is anyways accurate, then all I can say is that both pilots, notwithstanding the tailwind approach, must have been high on waccy baccy.
.

Personally cannot believe that anybody would do anything vaguely approaching that sort of manic approach. And approaching with a 15 knot tailwind is just asking for a pronounced cyclic flare at the last moment, close in (i.e. just what you DON'T want).

[Capn Bloggs]

If that animation of what happened
I thought it was real footage?

[ForkTailedDrKiller]

It was!

Dr:cool:

[reacher]

That's some graphic footage.
Can anyone who knows comment from the supplied footage, about the effectiveness of floats if had been fitted. The impact looked like it was going to be to violent and to asymmetric for the floats to have worked (or if there would have even been time to deploy them) but that's only to my very untrained eye.

Great to see Channel 10s journalistic accuracy high as usual. There were TWO SAS troopers killed apparently. I'm sure that's news to CAPT Bingley's family.

[wessex19]

Chatting to a few in the know, currency and training time available for naval flight deck operations by army air corp has been skinny!!! Not withstanding that, I will bite my tongue for the moment. Regarding the footage, its amazing anyone survived.

[Magoodotcom]

If that animation of what happened on the stern of Kanimbla is anyways accurate, then all I can say is that both pilots, notwithstanding the tailwind approach, must have been high on waccy baccy.

Personally cannot believe that anybody would do anything vaguely approaching that sort of manic approach. And approaching with a 15 knot tailwind is just asking for a pronounced cyclic flare at the last moment, close in (i.e. just what you DON'T want).

Oh, and comments like that are very helpful too, aren't they?! :suspect:

You see three or four seconds of footage and 'WHAM', you're an instant expert on the crash!?!? :hmm: Then again, I guess the danger of releasing the footage so early in the process was that all the 'Monday's experts' would crawl out of their holes and have their two-bob's worth!

Magoo

[notmyC150v2]

I think it was grossly unfair on the families to show that footage. Surely the news agencies would have been sated in their thirst for blood curdling footage with the animations previously released.

The release serves no higher purpose to the general public and only gives those grieving families a horror movie of their loved ones final moments. Fuel for nightmares for many years to come.

And as for the armchair experts who will look at this 5 seconds of horror and "know" what occurred, the rest of us just don't want to hear it. :*

The board of inquiry should be thoroughly ashamed of itself. These servicemen did not join up to be exploited in this way.

[Unhinged]

why let the footage out

The SMH report has some detail on this.

It seems that the President has given very serious consideration to whether or not the footage should be released, including the implications for the family and the military.

He gives pretty strong reasons for his decision.

[eman_resu]

Whilst the footage (with a 5 second, very narrow field of view) will be very useful to experienced accident investigators, it conveys nothing to the general public, and in fact is probably exceptionally misleading when viewed in isolation from any other evidence or testimony.

Its been splashed all over the media this morning and already the usual reasons for any aviation based accident are being touted, before any official investigation is concluded (I believe, I haven't seen any reports yet, however I stand to be corrected)

I for one will find it very hard to justify the decision to release the footage to the media this early in the inquiry, especially in light of the families comments, and will read the Presidents comments with interest.

[Arm out the window]

There will always be conflicting opinions on whether it's right or wrong to show stuff like this in public, how much of it and so on.
It's likely be distressing for the families, of course, and gratuitous airing of video, cockpit voice recordings etc for the titillation of the public is obviously a low act.

However, from the point of view of informing the interested public (including those with flying qualifications and experience) about what happened in the accident, I believe there's value in showing it - the media's job, even though I've sometimes bagged them for insensitivity and half-arsed research in the past - is to inform people about newsworthy events, and that clip is a very good way of doing so.
All respect is due to the poor individuals and families who suffered, of course, and similar videos of other accidents that may contain graphic footage of human suffering isn't the stuff for public release, even though it may be of significant value for crash investigators and medical experts.

From an aviator's viewpoint, the good quality film of the machine approaching, hitting the deck hard, spinning and so on is valuable - what led to an approach like that? How did the structure of the machine react to the punishment? What, if anything, could have been done to reduce the problem once it arose? How could I avoid doing something like that? What factors would have affected the subsequent egress by the survivors?

Lots of questions, not too many answers as yet. Our own opinions aren't important without knowing the full story, and hopefully we'll refrain from jumping to conclusions, but I support the decision to air the clip.

[Pollution IV]

The news article interestingly raises the issue of ‘Risk Management’ and authorisation not being properly conducted.

A little background for the uninitiated… The Risk Management Program was instituted throughout ADF military aviation in response to the Blackhawk disaster back in 1996. It seeks to improve the safety of ops by doing a more quantifiable analysis of risk. By analysing the components of the mission, each having a risk rating, the sum of all these ratings is found, giving an overall risk score which is matched to what is acceptable for the mission profile (ie whatever the commander is happy to sign-off on). This sounds like a wonderful system in theory, but the practical application is fraught with error. For example, if the risk profiling led to a score that was too high, the commander would simply ask the crews to re-evaluate the mission until the risk came into an acceptable bracket for him to authorize. Thus the mission would go ahead and the upper echelon could safely abrogate the responsibility for any accidents and leave the crews responsible - after all, the aircrew are the experts and they did the analysis, the commander is just reading and signing-off on the final score of ‘Medium risk’ -pretty much a paperwork exercise for him. Hence, “The Buck stops with the acft captain”, as was so famously quoted by the General after the ‘96 accident.
This system has degenerated to the point of ‘standard risk profiling’ for certain ops which simply doesn’t analyse potential probs effectively.

I believe this process leads to complacency in risk analysis and responsibility, as overworked authorizing officers are removed from the planning process and the paperwork seems to indicate its all ok. There may also be overconfidence in standard simulation profiles and trng methods, ie were these pilots ever tested on their ability to handle sudden wind gusts + a pitching deck + mission pressure -- can the Blackhawk sim even do this with any realism? Were the Navy procedures properly consulted on these important facets of successfully sticking it onto the deck?

I sincerely hope that the efficacious Risk Management system is completely reviewed or binned and the basic methods of thorough mission training and proper, thoughtful authorization processes are returned. In the end, no pilot willfully decides to crash his acft, he unwittingly does so due to a myriad of reasons, usually traced to inadequate trng and checking, not because the risk profile was borderline ‘Medium/High’.

Military flying is not like airline flying. There are too many variables to be placed in a matrix that can easily allow risk to be profiled, as if to gain an insurance policy premium. If the ADF heads want to stop these accidents occurring, they need to place more effort/importance on the old tried and proven trng methods, unload your key experienced people to supervise the boys/girls better and worry less about tin-plating your ass through new age systems!

[Arm out the window]

Pollution, though I didn't personally experience the risk management matrix in use but saw it in the introductory stages, my gut feeling, for what it's worth, was and is that a system like that is of severely limited usefulness.
A tick and flick exercise by an authorising officer, apart from the very basic and obvious things like 'are the crews current, sufficiently rested, experienced enough to undertake the task, have a weather forecast, have an intel brief' etc, which should all be taken care of by squadron systems anyway, isn't the way to go in my view.
When the captain comes up for the signature in the auth book, that complex risk management computer known as the authorising officer's brain is the only thing that's really going to do the job properly, at least until Deep Thought the super-computer takes over the job.

[Roller Merlin]

A Defense Public BOI (instead of a closed BOI) like this is convened because revelation of the facts and matters are deemed to be ‘in the public interest’. Public parties may attend the hearings, including members of the Media, and hence all facts become public knowledge as they are revealed to the attendees. So showing the Defense footage up front is just part of the ‘public’ process. The government and general public claim 'coverup' when Defence decided on a closed BOI. Even so, the chair of the BOI may decide to hold certain hearings in private where the public interest is not justified or in consideration to families etc – clearly the public interest outweighed the private one in the case. From here on every element of the circumstances can be examined.
I agree with A-O-T-W in regards to some of the aspects of releasing the video, especially because it will allow the public to better understand all the related material that will be discussed over the next few months. However having now read the SMH article which reports that the affected families and military advisers fought against the video release and families were distressed by the decision to release by one person (the first ever civilian chair of a military BOI) - it seems there has been a lack in appropriate and timely consideration for the affected families. An ADF BOI is not a court - it is not built upon a foundation of law, nor does it serve to apportion blame. The chairman does not have the status of civil judge in a public court. The BOI really serves to determine the truth /facts and prevent recurrences in an ADF where more than the occasional serving chief refer to us collectively as an 'ADF family'. Perhaps the chairman should be reminded of this.

[notmyC150v2]

The video itself is so short and so restricted in it's view it can have no relevance for any genuine "interested party" as opposed to the goulishly "curious".
It has been argued that the video can put things in perspective. Again I disagree. None of us, the distant public, have any knowledge or interest in how the military plan their missions and decide what goes ahead and what doesn't. The family is the only "external to the military" party who would have such an interest and they did not need to see the video on the 6 O'Clock news. Even though they may have an interest, they have no chance of changing practice though, so even then the release of the video to the families would have a questionable impact on the inquiry itself.
As for using the excuse of training pilots, how many pilots of large helicopters like the Blackhawk are regularly, or even rarely for that matter, required to land on the back of a moving ship in the middle of the ocean? Of the non military pilots who can actually answer the question as "Me" how many of those would be under the same pressures as the military pilots in question here? Answer? S F All!
At the end of this inquiry a finding will be handed down that either blames the CO of the exercise for approving the mission or blames the pilot for poor airmanship. Eitherway any such finding will be in the context of military operations with a very specific audience for review and interpretation. Any changes made as a result of this accident will be restricted to the military. Any changes to training of pilots will be restricted to the military. Any ongoing interest in the lives of the survivors or the loved ones of the deceased will be restricted to the military (or ex military).
For the drooling viewers of mytube and the news networks, it is nothing more than "aviation disaster porn".
If you are a helicopter pilot who understands the dangers of landing in tail winds etc., what possible difference could seeing the final seconds of these folks lives make to the way you operate. If you are not aware of the dangers then you clearly will never understand (how the hell did you get you license???) and the video will make no difference.
I maintain that the release of the video has achieved nothing more than giving the commercial tv networks another "grab" for their self promoting ads. It adds nothing to the inquiry and certainly aids aviators and the general public not at all.

[Unhinged]

None of us, the distant public, have any knowledge or interest in how the military plan their missions and decide what goes ahead and what doesn't.

Disagree. These people carry the heavy responsibility of protecting what you call "the distant public". I am part of that group, I'm also a professional pilot, and my taxes help pay for the military missions.

For all of these reasons (and more) I have a deep and genuine interest in how they plan and decide which missions go ahead.

[griffinblack]

hinged says:

I have a deep and genuine interest in how they plan and decide which missions go ahead.

This may be a public BOI, but I would be surprised if your interest will be sated. A lot of the planing and decision making processes should be kept out of the public domain for national security reasons.

NotmyC150 says

As for using the excuse of training pilots, how many pilots of large helicopters like the Blackhawk are regularly, or even rarely for that matter, required to land on the back of a moving ship in the middle of the ocean?

You make an assumption that they were trying to land on the ship.

UNCTUOUS

What can I say! All I can assume is your lack of tact is superseded by your ignorance.

I feel that the footage offers nothing to the public and its public viewing is a disgrace. I also feel the public comments offered about the authorisation process and the environmental conditions may be taken out of context.

[Shot Nancy]

Releasing the footage without qualification is biased.
What were the crew trying to achieve?
What was the experience of the crew?
What was the sortie authorised to do?
What was the maintenance state of the aircraft?
What aircraft failures occured during flight?
Etc, etc.
Need I go on?
Look at it, form your opinion, consider yourself lucky you were not involved and wait for the findings.

[YesTAM]

With the greatest of respect, I have an extremely low opinion of the senior ranks of all three services (with a few outstanding exceptions) and the military law system.

This opinion was formed by the squirming of the Navy after the Westralia fire and the subsequent machinations, since the cause of the fire was bleeding obvious to ANY marine engineeer.

The film was released for one reason and one reason only - to blacken the pilots name as a prelude to sheeting all the blame home to him

We have absolutely no idea what pressure the pilot was under and little details like that will be conveniently hidden, erased or remain unspoken. For all we know, and by way of example, the Pilot may have been instructed to return by a certain time "or else".

[trashie]

Lets just wait and see ehh, anything else is inappropriate!!

However, there has been some interesting discussion on the value of standard risk management processes and perhaps other human factors and CRM training and the dilution of their effects over time without proper and continual reinforcement.

[Capt Claret]

The article on P3 of The Australian (today Jun 20) starts, "Black Hawk 221 was hovering only metres above the deck of HMAS Kanimbla, a few seconds from landing, when it became clear something was wrong."

This statement does not accord with the footage shown. Is the footage complete, or is the statement flawed?

[Dick Smith]

Unctuous states:

If that animation of what happened on the stern of Kanimbla is anyways accurate, then all I can say is that both pilots, notwithstanding the tailwind approach, must have been high on waccy baccy.
.
Personally cannot believe that anybody would do anything vaguely approaching that sort of manic approach. And approaching with a 15 knot tailwind is just asking for a pronounced cyclic flare at the last moment, close in (i.e. just what you DON'T want). I tend to agree with other posters that the footage shouldn’t have been released – but now that it has been, it is interesting that Unctuous thought that it was simply an “animation.” I must admit when I initially looked at the footage I thought it was an animation as well.

I hope the inquiry looks at potential pilot incapacitation and also potential mechanical problems – control jamming etc. In other words, that minds are not made up too early as they have been in other inquiries.

[Spaghetti Monster]

I hope the inquiry looks at potential pilot incapacitation and also potential mechanical problems – control jamming etc. In other words, that minds are not made up too early as they have been in other inquiries.

Well said, Dick. It's sad to see people prepared to hook straight into the crew based on a few seconds of footage, without even pausing to consider mechanical failures or medical issues.

[Arm out the window]

As with many contentious issues, it can be beneficial to look at the extremes to put the middle ground in better perspective.
In this case, the extremes would be to either release no information whatsoever to the public, or televise the whole inquiry and publish all the evidence and transcripts in full.
Obviously, neither of those is going to happen, so we're left with some middle path.
The responsibility then rests with the board to release what they consider should be in the public domain, and with the media to publish it in such a way as to be sensitive to the needs of the families whilst conveying information to the public.
If there are to be newspaper articles and still photographs, and there's no way there wouldn't be, then video too is a legitimate and useful way of informing the public about a newsworthy event.
As I've already stated, graphic portrayal of suffering isn't appropriate, but I don't believe this video falls in that voyeuristic category.
C150, you may not be interested in the planning aspects of the mission, but I am. Also, I don't land big helicopters on ships but sometimes land little ones on them, and I think there's relevance in the details of this accident to that, similarly for people who operate to rigs or indeed any platform.
Griffinblack, point noted about the discussion of authorisation procedures - however, as long as no-one's giving away any secrets, it seems fair to venture some opinions. This is a place where people say what they think, for what that's worth, and though I know some media outlets have quoted it here and there, the value of it as some kind of authoritative source is equivalent to 'I heard some bloke down the pub say ... '

[notmyC150v2]

AOTW
C150, you may not be interested in the planning aspects of the mission, but I am. Also, I don't land big helicopters on ships but sometimes land little ones on them, and I think there's relevance in the details of this accident to that, similarly for people who operate to rigs or indeed any platform.


Point taken. But isn't that sort of information contained within the findings and recommendations? I strongly believe that these should be made public but the video has no such relevance.

Someone on this thread earlier said it was valuable to see how the tail snapped off, WTF??? Why is that valuable? Why is it necessary to see it?

I also hold the hierarchy of the Australian Military in some contempt for the way they handled the Westralia tragedy as well as the earlier disasters with Blackhawks and Seakings, so keeping them honest is of vital importance. The public inquiry will (hopefully) do that.

The releasing of the video adds nothing to keeping them honest and adds nothing to keeping our skies and military personnel safer.

[Belgique]

Blackhawk Crash Inquiry
.
An Australian Defence Force Blackhawk helicopter had been briefed to approach a ship's deck from a relative angle and with a tailwind component that virtually guaranteed an accident, an ADF Inquiry was told today. In a graphic video taken from the deck of the HMAS Kanimbla the aircraft is seen in the initial stage of its approach and then, in the final six seconds descending very rapidly, as it's in the grip of vortex ring or "settling with power". Courtesy of the 15kt tailwind, the aircraft was descending within its own rotor downwash. That's a condition where increased power tends to accelerate the aircraft in a downward direction, the only escape being to incline the rotor disc via a forward cyclic stick input and accelerate horizontally out of the vortex - height permitting.
.
In last November's accident off Fiji, the transition into the vortex ring condition was so rapid, it's likely that neither pilot realized it for what it was. After striking the deck hard and losing its tail-rotor, the rapidly rotating helo plunged off the far side of the deck into very deep water. Being an Army helo, the aircraft didn't have flotation gear and so the troopers onboard escaped from as deep as 30m beneath the surface. Two died in the accident. Asymmetric Vortex ring, causing a rapid unrecoverable roll, is also the acknowledged Nemesis of the USMC's tilt-rotor Osprey. The video-clip can be viewed at this link (http://media.fairfax.com.au/?rid=29074)

[BurglarsDog]

As an ex participant within "The ADF System" i.e. = More with Less for Longer -I firmly believe that the current Mil Risk assessment process is very much a tick and flick exercise - like so much in the ADF - which is after all a Can Do organisation! But that is another story.
In this case I think that the BOI has made up its mind - verdict = pilot error . By releasing this video footage the public / uninformed non pilot types can be led towards agreeing with such a conclusion. No such thing as bad publicity eh? All depends on what outcome you are trying to achieve.
What we really need to know is what pressures and failings as outlined in something like the Reason model this crew was affected by. Only then will anyone stop this happening again - maybe.
Whatever is discovered - at the end of the day it will all be about assigning responsibility for liability and $$$$$$$ money!!:=
DogGone

[Agony]

As an ex suferer of the AVRM concept, I can only agree with the tick and flick concept. In the main my experience of it was that it was reverse engineered to achieve what was required up to a point. I must say however that when utilised in high profile and high risk events and brought to the attention of the higher authorities it actually halted needless and dangerous events.
What am I saying, it appears to me that the everyday use of AVRM by lines crews is flawed and given a scant respect. It should however be used for the rare occurrence of operating outside of normal SOP's, (which funnily enough does need to happen in the military). For most of your mil flying, ops should be contained within some form of SOP or similar. The risk should have been analysed well before the flight in the cold hard light of day and so long as the crew are operating within the SOP etc then there is no problem. In an SOP sortie, AVRM should not be an issue to discuss, other than that the level of risk appended is in conjuction with the level of risk able to be authorised.
As an aside, I don't think the release of the video does any good except for perhaps tarninshing the crew before the outcome of the enquiry. There is too little information available to be of significance to the viewer, but far too much to be a arm chair expert.
So of the "apparent facts" talked about here, I would hazard to guess that they bear little or no resemblance to what actually happended. Wait for the outcome...
I have my own opinions, after a fair bit of deck ops, but I will wait for all rather than part of the info before I make up my mind. And on that, I will probably never have all the data anyway...........
Let's just hope that this BOI achieves something meaningful, rather that the lack lustre efforts of previous BOI's. :sad: