Word: rotor
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Browne and Straw, with 2,500 hrs. of flawless flying between them, spent the final seconds of their life steering their Cobra away from a school as its twin engines sputtered, slowing its rotor blades nearly to a halt. Upon impact, the aircraft exploded into a 1,500[degree]F fireball, fed by 300 gal. of jet fuel. The conflagration destroyed the helicopter, making it impossible to determine the cause of the crash...
...strong "gravitational pull" on the service. Bell reaps 95% of the Marines' spending on helicopters each year, or more than $1 billion. More critically, some Pentagon officials suggest that the Marines don't want the crash to jeopardize Bell's $36 billion V-22 program. That Marine "tilt-rotor" aircraft, which takes off and lands like a helicopter and cruises like a turboprop airplane, is on the verge of lifting off after more than a decade of troubled development...
...Marines are strangely revising their own findings. Last week an officer speaking on behalf of the corps told TIME that it believes pilot error caused the crash because the crew failed to glide the chopper safely to the ground with its unpowered but spinning rotor blades. That is a startling assertion, given that the official investigation contained no hint that the crew members' actions contributed to their death. It seems the Marine credo--"The risk of death has always been preferable to letting a fellow Marine down"--may have been set aside in this case...
...Portable Air Defense System, used for the small-missile launchers. "We keep asking the Army," a Joint Staff officer says, "how many Apaches they think are going to come back." That's why the helicopters--initially heralded as saviors--still sit at their Albanian base, twiddling their rotor blades...
Nearly all helicopter crashes are the result of engine malfunction which cut off power to the rotor blades, said Robert E. Breiling, an independent contractor who has compiled aircraft safety records since...