A simple call that made a huge difference

Recently, the helicopter crashes have brought back some memories from my first deployment that had been buried for awhile now.

There was two days our two sister Apache battalions each lost an aircraft and the crews aboard.

There was the day I was on the other end of the radio when one of our aircraft was shot down, thankfully our crew members were able to be pulled out by the other chalk and except for some minor injuries were okay.

There was the day thirteen months into a fifteen month deployment that chalk one called they were taking fire and broke right.  Our aircraft was flying a little tighter than normal and I remember seeing the top of chalk one's main rotor pass close underneath us.

Then there was the day, a little less than halfway through that deployment, that a simple call to climb by our Standardization Instructor (SI) kept our aircraft from having a dynamic rollover.  The other crew chief and I were on our last flight to continue our progression, our last task was sling loads.  Shortly after we had cleared the flight line, we heard a loud pop.  As we scanned what we could see of the aircraft from our seats, we weren't able to determine right away what was going on.  Then hydraulic fluid started flowing.  The original thought was that something had busted on the hydraulic deck.  The pilots called back to the tower and said we needed to do an emergency landing.  As the inertia reels were locked, we ensured we were prepared in the event the landing was a little harder than expected.  We were about three feet from touching down, when the SI called to 'climb, climb, climb'.  The pilots, who were confused, followed his direction.  Once they had gained a little altitude, the pilots asked what was going on.  The SI then explained that the hydraulic fluid wasn't coming from the hydraulic deck.  One of the main landing gear struts had been blown in half.  At that very moment, we knew that we had avoided a very dangerous situation.  That in the moment of that simple three words, serious injuries, if not worse were avoided that.  For those who have never seen the results of a dynamic rollover, I encourage you to take a moment and google the images.