Man....Fark really is the best for news... I literally just heard about this on tv seconds ago.

i pray for our troops.

Enough with helicopters crashing already!

Maybe we should just stop using helicopters over there....

We killed more people than saddam!

I still haven't seen this on TV yet.

Behold the power of FARK.

Man....Fark really is the best for news... I literally just heard about this on tv seconds ago.

It really is, too. This was the only site up during 9/11, the first time I came here.

What the hell is up with these helicopters? Craziness.

Sadly... Iraqi TV will probably declare they shot down both of the choppers.

Lightswitch is right. The US casualties in the last 3 "engagements" (not big enough to call them wars) have almost a 2:1 ratio for friendly fire versus the "enemy".

:( Hope they find them.

Maybe we should only send out one search and rescue helicopter this time, just to be safe.

GCD
Ya know, the American manage to kill themselves more efficiently than the enemy.

True...and sad. However, at least ours manage to take off first.

Ya know, the American manage to kill themselves more efficiently than the enemy.


Read: " Two Royal Navy "

I don't remember the USA having a royal navy....

Very unfortunate. Especially since they were search and rescue. If and when those guys buy the farm, it's supposed to be while trying to save someone else's life.

: (

Too sad.

This kinda thing happens quite often during peacetime operations....it just isn't newsworthy

/sad commentary on what is considered newsworthy

Royal Navy - is that British?

Hey, I'm the first one to say that the Canadian choppers cause more farking damage by falling out of the sky than actually preforming their duties.

Losses
by Randall Jarrell

It was not dying: everybody died.
It was not dying: we had died before
In the routine crashes-- and our fields
Called up the papers, wrote home to our folks,
And the rates rose, all because of us.
We died on the wrong page of the almanac,
Scattered on mountains fifty miles away;
Diving on haystacks, fighting with a friend,
We blazed up on the lines we never saw.
We died like aunts or pets or foreigners.
(When we left high school nothing else had died
For us to figure we had died like.)

In our new planes, with our new crews, we bombed
The ranges by the desert or the shore,
Fired at towed targets, waited for our scores--
And turned into replacements and worke up
One morning, over England, operational.

It wasn't different: but if we died
It was not an accident but a mistake
(But an easy one for anyone to make.)
We read our mail and counted up our missions--
In bombers named for girls, we burned
The cities we had learned about in school--
Till our lives wore out; our bodies lay among
The people we had killed and never seen.
When we lasted long enough they gave us medals;
When we died they said, "Our casualties were low."

The said, "Here are the maps"; we burned the cities.

It was not dying --no, not ever dying;
But the night I died I dreamed that I was dead,
And the cities said to me: "Why are you dying?
We are satisfied, if you are; but why did I die?"

Man, what's up with this?
You just know that the guys next in line to jump in the helicopters are gonna say "Ya know what? We're gonna just walk."

These were British helicopters that crashed though. All 7 crew members were Britons according to NBC.

Damn helicopters, condolences to our U.K friends..:(

If we get this over with quickly, can we put 3 billion or so towards the next-gen helos?

You know, single/dual rotor, heavy armor, advanced avoidance radar, RUN WELL, etc...

Interestingly enough, this happened almost 5 hours ago.

Behold the power of due censorship.

Yeah, you Limeys and Canucks can't blame this one on us!

Gulf?

What Gulf?

Mexico?

Maine?

Norway?

Isnt Gulf a french word?

ive got a question... is there lots of helicopters getting downed for stupid reasons? or in other wars has the same things happened but because of lack of news coverage we just dont really hear about it?

i imagine in vietnam there were plenty of snafu that didnt get pasted all over CNN every time it happened...

anyone got any ideas on that?

Sorry, my condolences to the Brits for their losses.

ChrisIsBored - I agree. They tried to take credit for the other helicopter problems. Next they'll try to take credit for the tornado in Georgia, or maybe the Columbia disaster.

/Hopes this thread doesn't become a flamewar....

Ok, so I was wrong on the American part of it. I don't doubt for a second that there's going to be more American-caused casualties than the Iraqis are going to kill combined during both wars.

Seriously, the major problem is a lot of these troops are young and have the "gung ho" attitude about this whole thing. I should know, I have two friends who were shipped out for this. Both of them are wound up like clock-springs about this too. They can't wait to see action. One of them even stated "Free vacation".

It's that type of attitude that causes these accidents to happen.

Now, I'm not saying this is what caused the helicopters to crash, but you're going to see a lot more deaths in the very near future due to "accidents".

i imagine in vietnam there were plenty of snafu that didnt get pasted all over CNN every time it happened...

Not just that, but since the accident casualty rate is higher than the hostile fire rate, the accidents stand out more. It does seem like there is more recently, but I wouldn't be surprised if the accidents are occuring at the same rate as they always have.

Divad - You are correct. We protect out troops so well from the enemy that the death toll from accidents could possibly be higher than deaths due to combat. Things like this snafu happen in every war just now they make the news because that was the biggest number of our casualties for the day.

Dishwasherrat: Behold. A news organization actually waited for confirmation.

If it was censorship, you'd have never heard about it.

But then again. I don't think i'd feel comfortable announcing to the Iraqis that two helicopters had just gone down.

Both the CH-47 Chinook and the H-3 See King are 40 year old technology....hardly new stuff. This really isn't surprising. Tragic....not surprising.

What the fark is with all the accidents? I swear they are making the war look like a Three Stooges short.

GCD, there are people flying around in giant metal machines full of explosives... I imagine accidents are impossible to avoid, even with trained cool headed people... things break... sand gets in things... things happen... tie rod on a friend of mines car broke while going over a rail road... imagine something like that happening while you are flying around in a chopper... shiat happens

Oy! Enough with the helicopter crashing thingies!

If we started seeing Blackhawks and Apaches running into each other and falling out of the sky....THAT would be surprising.

by the way, a bunch of people last night were saying, without any proof whatsoever, that the helicopters were actually shot down.

Well, in the case of the last one with the 12 british and 4 american troops, there is conclusive troops it was mechanical.

So everyone looking for an excuse to break out their conspiracy theories can get back to reality.

DrToast: Exactly.

You'd have accidents if you had 20000 people in traffic, it's not surprising when you get a bunch of vehicles in the air.

Divad, I don't think S&R choppers are going to be full of explosives.

we need hoverbikes now, people!

Sorry Nexea. Just pointing out that the stuff that has had the problems is the OLD stuff not the new stuff....didn't intend to offend.

43%:

"But then again. I don't think i'd feel comfortable announcing to the Iraqis that two helicopters had just gone down."

Which was precisely my point.

I heard something on the news last night, that a lot of these older choppers and other transport vehicles had originally been decommissioned, and had only been brought out of "retirement" for the war as "emergency" equipment. I don't know if that's the case with British stuff, though.

It sucks that we're losing more men to accidents than enemy fire, but as someone else said, we lose a lot of guys this way during peacetime, and you'll never see that on the news.

...and Divad, they were over the water. No sand there.

hey look someone on the air.... talking....