Chopper rotor blades start "departing the aircraft."

[Brett327]

and the 4.5 bearing fiasco with the Prowler J-52 (ongoing, NADEP JAX seems to have a grip on it,,, then another one fails....)

If you're referring to the mishap in Oregon, it wasn't a 4.5 bearing failure.

Brett

 

[JIMC5499]

However all kidding aside-
The "big question" in the original post can never be answered in this forum. Speculation, and postulations aside, rest assured Military Aviation (Navy) has processes in place to fix issues pronto once identified.

Problem is that it usually takes an "incident" to identify some of these problems. Sometimes these incidents result in the loss of life. An example would be the crash of a DC-10 in Souix City, Iowa in the late 80's. A defect in a Titanium billet caused a turbine wheel to come apart, cutting the Primary and Secondary hydraulic lines to the tail of the aircraft. The first problem, the billet defect, led to the discovery of the second problem, the positioning of the hydraulic lines.

 

[ghost]

However all kidding aside-

I haven't seen any messages on this one, (I am not O level H-60's either, doesn't mean it ain't on the streets, might not have been in the plaid) and I read message traffic daily.

The " internal Sikorsky document from earlier this month", could be addressing an issue that was on the streets earlier this year. Of course a "redline" was issued by TYCOMM and all suspect components were inspected, removed and repaired if needed and returned to service.

Big Iron was absolutely right on. If only the average person knew the extent of "mistakes" from the manufacturing and depot facilities.

From a maintenance standpoint this is bad- However, Navy (all military aviation) is the best at safety, and getting a problem addressed and fixed. (We don't have FAA beauracracy to deal with)

In maintenance, we always ask ourselves, "whats the next redline"? Props on P-3's (PRB-92, NADEP Cherry Point failed to properly NDI over 100 props) and the 4.5 bearing fiasco with the Prowler J-52 (ongoing, NADEP JAX seems to have a grip on it,,, then another one fails....), have been the biggest issues I have dealt with and they are huge.

The "big question" in the original post can never be answered in this forum. Speculation, and postulations aside, rest assured Military Aviation (Navy) has processes in place to fix issues pronto once identified.

I think this is old news for people in the community. There was a special one time inspection of T/R paddles earlier this summer that caused a bunch of them to be replaced.

ghost

 

[Lawman]

I was marveling at that one myself. I'm amazed that thing didn't shake itself apart.

Brett

Between that one and the rotor mechanisms dings and holes wow.. just wow.

 

[insanebikerboy]

What interests me more than the fact that the helo held together is the fact that the pilots were able to fly it home. Considering how many holes were in the helo, makes me wonder how many holes were in the pilots.

Amazing.

 

[SemperGumbi]

My former squadron had a trim tab of a rotor delaminate in flight took most of the trailing edge of the blade off.....set it down on the 9th hole of a golf course.

How fortunate.

"Yeah, and we just happened to have our clubs..."