My grandfather was a Marine and later a Secret Service agent. He didn’t tell many stories, but one of the few he did was about riding a helicopter down to the ground through autorotation during engine-out testing – this was apparently while they were qualifying the original Marine One for Eisenhower’s use.

Helicopters are sometimes rightly derided as “a collection of spare parts flying in loose formation” but in this case it seems like they were spitting in the face of God and daring him to do something about it – flying into dangerous terrain, in inclement weather, in what very likely was an old and ill-maintained aircraft. That’s a lot of bad choices to make at once.

Wow, I would have never guessed helicopters could do that. Very interesting read + video!

It is technically true, though. Autorotation only provides some control while going down (and the adds inertia helps, too,) but generally they won’t be getting back to an airport or something the way an airplane could.

The way it works is they pitch the rotor blades to collect head speed on the rotor and then flair just before the crash, using the rotor’s inertia to make one last bit of thrust. They can use some of the energy for control and to get someplace safe, but they’re usually not trying to go cross country.

Done correctly, in a clear area, they can survive. But a clear area is a lot easier to find for a helicopter than it is for

Usually helicopter crashes are fatal, however. Most crashes are caused by pilots though, for example pilots that elect to fly through cloudy mountains….

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