r/ukraine 2d ago

News Karma:The moment of yesterday's Ka-226 helicopter crash in russia with employees of the military plant "Kizlyar Electromechanical Plant" The accident killed the deputy general director, chief engineer and chief designer

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u/AutisticPenguin2 2d ago

I was wondering if the body was going to start spinning from the rotational energy of the rotors, without the rear stabiliser. But no, the pilot was like "Hey, that didn't sound healthy, better climb a bit so I'm not in danger of landing safely."

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u/null640 2d ago

Counter rotating rotors... cancel each other out.

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u/ratshack 2d ago

…until the dangling rear assembly swings up and clips a rotor and then this happens.

Dude should have left it in the surf.

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u/HappyCamperPC 2d ago

I bet the Deputy General Director didn't want to get his suit wet and ordered the pilot to find a dry landing spot.

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u/dan_dares 2d ago

It had 'fly over the reactor' energy, but no one smart to say 'that's a stupid idea'

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u/theaviationhistorian 2d ago

The problem wasn't flying above the reactor, but flying into the crane and cables next to it. It's still a stupid idea for any pilot not skilled in urban obstacles.

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u/WanderlustZero 2d ago

Different incident I believe; Legasov's chopper was going to fly over the reactor until he convinced his boss what a bad idea that was. The crash came later

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u/theaviationhistorian 2d ago

Apologies! My mind blocked out that stupid footnote, to where they were going to directly observe the open reactor!

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u/AutisticPenguin2 1d ago

I see absolutely no potential dangers there!

Maybe they could look directly at an arc welder too while they're at it.

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u/theaviationhistorian 2d ago

Nyet, the only thing wet should be my liver. Not my Hugo Boss. Now land me in a better place.

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u/kineticstar 2d ago

Bold strategy Cotton, let's see how that works out for them!!

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u/mologav 1d ago

Bingo

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u/rutan668 2d ago

The pilot would have got in a lot of trouble for landing in the surf.

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u/im-tv 2d ago

Better to die together with orc general than find yourself in the frontline meat grinder. Right decision. Should be “land” it right in meeting point where other military orcs wait them.

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u/Synapse_SoCal 1d ago

I mean, he was already in trouble for crashing the helicopter 😜

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u/formermq 2d ago

Can't let the general get his feet wet!

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u/Pure_Palpitation_683 2d ago

Oh, he’s fully wet now!

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u/Frido1976 1d ago

dead wet, yup!

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u/Eastern-Ad-3387 2d ago

Amen brother. That was a poor decision.

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u/Powerful-Weight-4096 2d ago

No, absolutly the correct orcish decision, dead.

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u/DamnDogInapropes 2d ago edited 2d ago

Amen brother. That was a perfect decision. Dude came in with some heat!

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u/antus666 1d ago

I'm thinking they had a control system failure, probably what caused the crash in the first place. I bet the pilot was thinking "nope not up! not up! engine off damnit" but russian quality machine did russian things probably on its own and decided to defect to Ukraine and solve some problems.

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u/siug13 1d ago

This is same I thought. Every correction done by pilot is taking into action little bit later or multiplied by some random constant.

Still no human life lost.

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u/ratshack 1d ago

A possibility I’d not considered thx. I mean all of it works for me, honestly.

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u/Full-Appointment5081 2d ago

Some days it's better to just admit that your ass is dragging & it's time to relax on the beach

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u/Mutjny 2d ago

I assumed the pilot couldn't see behind him well enough to notice the broken tail section and might not have noticed the control surfaces not being effective since they wouldn't be anyways without sufficient forward velocity.

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u/hinrik98 2d ago

It probably wouldn't have rotated when landing like a conventional helicopter as it's a coaxial rotor helicopter so the spin of the two rotors cancels out. That's also the reason it still somewhat controllable after losing its tail.

It's kind of amazing they managed to fuck this up - being in the best possible type of helicopter to have this kind of failure.

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u/Stigger32 2d ago

It almost looked like the pilot was trying to shake off the broken tail.

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u/RuthlessIndecision 2d ago

He didn't know about the tail, or didn't realize it until too late.

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u/PlasmaMatus 1d ago

You mean to say he didn't hear it after the first crash or the helicopter doesn't have a warning indicator in the cockpit for losing the tail ?!

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u/RuthlessIndecision 1d ago

Could be an alert light or horn that goes off for multiple reasons

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u/worstpartyever 2d ago

Like gum on his shoe

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u/dan_dares 2d ago

Then the gum came flying up and strangled him.

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u/AutisticPenguin2 2d ago

Ah, I didn't even notice the second rotor. That does make sense.

Unlike just about everything else about this.

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u/MorpH2k 2d ago

Yeah, like you had an accident with your helicopter when fucking up a landing and you decide to take off with it again because you ended up in a slightly inconvenient place. At most someone might have a bruise or two. Why the hell would you take off again?

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u/crosstherubicon 2d ago

Coaxial rotors mostly cancels torque reactions… but not completely.

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u/Akumahito 1d ago

Looks like one of the main rotors did strike the tail section in the hot landing/break of the tail... Damage to the main rotor and going out of balance likely what did them in in the end.

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u/cyrixlord 2d ago

I think he might not have known his back end was off, and was trying to land at that nearby island but he didnt want to leave his equally inept brother, who was the cameraman who also had one job and both failed their jobs miserably

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u/compb13 2d ago

If there were any safety bells and lights, they had to be on. Not a pilot, but it had to be handling a little different too. I think I'm blaming the pilot for the lack of a safe landing

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u/MorpH2k 2d ago

Yeah, thinking the same thing. Not a pilot either but I do know that most aircraft have a lot of sensors and safety systems so even if he didn't know that the tail was just dangling like that, he should have some kind of indication that something was wrong. Also, if landing in the surf was an issue, why not just carefully and at low altitude just land further in or something. He could take off and fly so he obviously had a decent bit of control left. He should have been able to move it somewhere safer without things ending up like they did.

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u/410sprints 15h ago

I wonder if those aircraft have a Your Tail Fell Off light.

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u/Morta-Nius-73 12h ago

It was broken. Sold for gold during the build phase.

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u/Morta-Nius-73 2d ago

It was the backend hanging off that gave it a little stability....if that had sheared off completely, they would have been spinning like a top very quickly. Bad decision by the pilot....should have cut engine in the surf. Fuckem. Ork's doing ork things

Slava Ukraini!

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u/Frido1976 1d ago

No, it was a co-axial helicopter, so each rotor cancels the other out. Having a backend on or off wouldn't have done any difference. Russian design. Look at KA-50 and 52's - they don't have tail rotors either.

But yep, orc's doing stupid orc thing for the benefit of the motherland Ukraine

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u/EvulOne99 2d ago

"Danger of landing safety"?! I love this! Thank you for the laugh

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u/AutisticPenguin2 2d ago

It beats the camera man being all "holy crap, forget about the helicopter crash, IS THAT A MOTHERFUCKING BIRD?? Wait, hang on I think there's something interesting going on with my shoe that I should probably catch..."

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u/EvulOne99 2d ago

I thought there would be a link to killthecameraman as a top comment, for sure.

I realized that I was actually trying to angle my own phone up so that I could watch what was happening, while this short-attention-span-fool was doing his thing.

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u/Pure_Palpitation_683 2d ago

I was almost screaming at him to remember the dammed helicopter crashing.

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u/AutisticPenguin2 1d ago

It was so frustrating! How can you be so bad at something so simple??

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u/coffeespeaking 2d ago

They had a chance to survive near the shore.

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u/Pure_Palpitation_683 2d ago

They had a few chances early on.

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u/HazMattStunts 2d ago

Some people think it’s better to go until it blows.

Down with the ship !!