Air Force News, news from Iraq - Air Force Times

Mechanical failure blamed in Italy crash

Mechanical failures aboard an Army Black Hawk helicopter led to the deadliest crash involving airmen in 2007, an investigation concluded.

The Nov. 8 accident killed four airmen riding on the UH-60 as it flew over northeastern Italy. The airmen, all assigned to the 31st Fighter Wing at Aviano Air Base, Italy, were Capt. Cartize B. Durham, Staff Sgt. Robert D. Rogers, Staff Sgt. Mark A. Spence and Senior Airman Kenneth P. Hauprich Jr.

Two Army pilots, Capt. Christian P. Skoglund and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Davidangelo F. Alvarez, both assigned to an Army aviation unit at Aviano, also died in the crash.

An Army investigation concluded the UH-60 aircrew wasn’t at fault. Instead, the investigation focused on the helicopter cockpit’s mechanical controls, and why they didn’t respond as the pilots struggled to stop the Black Hawk’s spinning fall. Because the crash involved an Army crew and helicopter, the Air Force didn’t mount its own inquiry.

The flight was to have been a mix of training for the Army crew and a reward for seven airmen who were onboard to sightsee and participate in a re-enlistment ceremony. The airmen came from the 31st Maintenance Squadron and 31st Logistics Readiness Squadron, units that often helped their Army aviation counterparts.

The Army crew and helicopter were assigned to the G Company, 52nd Aviation Regiment, at Aviano.

The 19-year-old Black Hawk took off in good weather from Aviano at 11:34 a.m. for a flight expected to last about an hour. After flying north over the Italian Alps, the helicopter turned south for low-level training near the Piave River.

As the helicopter reached the river training area, it stopped and hovered at 400 feet. The helicopter then began a slow, nose-down, left turn.

That’s when investigators believe the aircrew lost control of the UH-60.

As the helicopter turned left, the aircraft went into a dive and began spinning to the left. In a matter of seconds, the Black Hawk spun around three or four times before striking the rocky riverbed nose first. The impact was so severe that it snapped apart the helicopter’s main structural beams, releasing the rotor transmission into the passenger compartment and cockpit.

Testimony from Italian witnesses to the crash and a videotape shot by an airman ruled out the possibility the pilots were flying dangerously immediately before losing control of the Black Hawk, the report said.

An inspection of the aircraft wreckage led investigators to focus on the cockpit flight controls. In the wreckage, investigators discovered a broken “bellcrank lever” on the pilot’s side of the cockpit. The lever is one of several mechanical links enabling the pilots to control the helicopter.

“If this failure occurred during flight, then it would have caused loss of yaw control,” the report said, though investigators were not 100 percent sure the bellcrank lever broke during the flight.

Because the helicopter lacked a flight data recorder, there were no electronic records to determine whether the helicopter had experienced mechanical problems prior to the crash.

Two out of three Army laboratory analyses of the bellcrank lever concluded it broke prior to the crash after repeatedly rubbing against a control rod. However, detailed studies of the bellcrank lever were inconclusive about what led to the break.

A third lab believed the bellcrank lever broke when the Black Hawk hit the ground.

The flight controls had been overhauled in the spring of 2007 as part of a routine “preventative maintenance inspection” done by the private contractor DynCorp at Coleman Army Airfield in Germany, the report said.

Prior to the inspection, aircrews flying the Black Hawk had complained about hearing a clicking sound in the flight controls. Flight line maintainers believed the problem was with a left-side bellcrank lever or its bearings.

The investigation concluded that reports of a clicking sound coming from the lever area would be “consistent with the damage to flight controls” found on the Black Hawk.

However, DynCorp inspectors couldn’t duplicate the sound or find a problem.

Investigators talked with one person, whose name is blacked out in the report, who said he continued to hear the troublesome sound after the UH-60 returned from the inspection. However, no other personnel said they heard the clicking.

Investigators concluded that they were not certain whether the Black Hawk was flight-worthy prior to the fatal flight. Investigators noted that “numerous” maintenance discrepancies were found on the aircraft that didn’t contribute to the crash.