Apache Helo that was shot down.

[12-34hom]

Was it just me or did anyone here find it strange that the Apache that was shot down was left intact and not destroyed by other US gunships?

There would have to be some folks out there that would love to have the tech that copter supports.

12-34hom.

 

[UnknownSailor]

I read earlier today that it was destroyed by a bomber.

 

[buzz_knox]

A fighter was dispatched to take it out during the night. I guess they didn't want to risk a sortie in day light.

 

[ballistic gelatin]

I want to know how they did it and left no bullet holes. What is the weakness?

 

[bogie]

I'm guessing that it had a mechanical problem, and all the folks with popguns decided to claim credit.

 

[QuarterBoreGunner]

Saw a piece of video where they were interviewing (I guess, not speaking Arabic) the farmer who supposedly shot down the Apache (yeah…right). This guy was about a million years old and waving his nasty, dirty, pre-smokeless powder BRNO rifle around and the interviewer was just eating it up.

Right. So the cranky old man with the C&R rifle took out a bazillion dollar flying tank with one golden BB.

More likely he wet his pants when the thing came down in his yard.


I also saw in the piece of video that the Apache was down one Hellfire AGM-114 missile and about a half dozen Hydra 70 rockets… hope they found their mark before the chopper went down.

 

[beckrodgers]

apache

We saw where there was a misslle launched to take it out on one of the news shows,probably bombers as well make sure,like one said lot of tech on board to be captured. Thanks

 

[Blackhawk]

There wasn't any video I know of showing the underside of the bird, so there's no way to tell what damage it incurred over the target, and we probably won't know unless we get the pilots back, presuming they know.

Seems like it was an unanticipated forced landing. If they had known battle damage, they would have headed toward a more secure area or flown back accompanied.

A mystery to me is why they went down with missiles still on board. That makes me think they never made it to the battle. Stuff breaks, but it seems like the pilots thought whatever failed didn't initially threaten their ability to get back. It seems like they lacked enough power to continue, which could be due to any number of reasons from component failures to ground fire.

IMO, the Army knows a lot more than it's saying, and for right now, that's the way it should be.

 

[Leatherneck]

Blackhawk,
Remember the axiom of all pilots: "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate, in that order." They prolly had a failure/forced landing, and didn't have the ability to jettison their weapons.

I reckon we've incinerated the Apache by now.

One of the saddest missions I flew in Vietnam was to destroy, with six MK 82s, an Army Chinook that had been shot down in the Ashau Valley.

TC
TFL Survivor

 

[Blackhawk]

Right, Leatherneck, but the intriguing thing to me is that they went down with a full ordnance load, which strongly suggests that they never made the delivery to the Medinah division they were targeting. If that's the case, there's a liklihood that they had an aircraft failure enroute to the target or they were low leveling and suffered a unique hit from small arms that foreclosed their aviate and communicate options.

Unfortunately, you can't sneak up on people with a chopper so anybody in the flight path knows you're coming long before you can see them.

 

[QuarterBoreGunner]

they went down with a full ordnance load

In the video piece I saw where they were interviewing the farmer, you could clearly see that the Apache only had three Hellfire AGMs on the rails and the Hydra rocket pods were missing about a dozen.

They may not have gotten to the objective but it sure looks like they had some targets to explain the missing ordnance.