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Originally Posted by P_Funk
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Originally Posted by August
I don't think anyone was shooting at them, nor could that stunt be pulled off in anything but an absolutely calm sea without crashing the helo, thereby making it fairly useless as a combat extraction method.
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I dunno. Them SEALs are crazy buggers. And its always nice to have an extra ace up your sleeve in case you happen to be under fire in a calm sea.
Thats why you gotta love the special forces. They do all that crazy stuff. Stuff that sounds stupid but works. |
Well having spent 3 years in a Special Forces outfit (MI Company 10th SFGA 1981-84) i'm somewhat familiar with their habit for experimentation. Star extractions, water deployments, experimental parachutes and equipment, i've seem a lot of things tried and don't get me wrong experimentation is a good thing.
But most of these turn out to be not very practical. Now maybe that method could eventually become viable with a helo made for the task but i'm telling ya that Chinook crew is going to have some serious maintenance headaches for a long time ones that could very easily effect the reliability of the aircraft. There's a lot of electronic equipment, wires and control cables running under that floor and dousing them with seawater like that cannot be a healty thing for them.
As for the safety issue of hovering a helo with it's bottom settled in the sea and it's rear deck open to the unbalancing effect of waves well, i'll bet the pilot knuckles were very, very white the whole time he was down there.