Which helicopter was used in bin laden raid

Looking at that photograph in the present day, Osborne comments that a few modifications from a standard Black Hawk are clear. An additional blade or blades would let that rotor spin more slowly, but still achieve the performance the helicopter needs.

He also notes the presence of additional smooth, cover-like material. A tradeoff may have been that it was heavier. It may not have been a completely stealth helicopter, but it may have been a stealthier one. Black Hawk helicopters are made by Sikorsky, which is part of Lockheed Martin, and Doug Birkey, the executive director of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies, sees a possible connection between a canceled Boeing-Sikorsky helicopter program called Comanche and the retrofitted helicopters of the raid.

That, plus following a careful route into Pakistan that they had figured out in advance, would have helped. As Mark Bowden says in his work The Finish —a thorough journalistic account of the mission and events preceding it—a drone called the RQ Sentinel played a key role, too. That drone is less of a secretive entity than the helicopters, to be sure, and the Sentinel was known for flying out of Kandahar, Afghanistan. It was to hide from our partners, the Pakistanis. Moreover, statements from Washington seem intended to obscure the issue of the mystery chopper.

In any event, the implications are potentially enormous. For one, the existence of a stealthy helicopter means we must revise upward our assessment of U. Special Operations Forces' ability to strike fast and unseen, all over the world.

Second, we should take with a grain of salt all the recent hand-wringing over the supposed decay in the American military rotorcraft industry. If we really have already fielded the world's first radar-evading helicopter, there's less reason to worry that the United States might have lost its chopper-making skills.

Third, the fact that the Pentagon was willing to risk its most secret whirlybird "shows the importance of the mission in the eyes of U. Finally, the black helicopter sheds new light on the military's suspicion of possible Pakistani interference in the bin Laden raid. But Panetta later admitted that the United States had deliberately not told Pakistan of the impending raid.

That "could jeopardize the mission," because Pakistan "might alert the targets. That would've meant essentially barging into Pakistani airspace, and hoping that Islamabad would refrain from targeting the attackers with surface-to-air-missiles. The unavoidable inference is that the commandos feared Pakistan might actually shoot at unannounced American choppers.

That revelation, more so than the mere existence of a stealthy helicopter, could be the most compelling news of all. Photo: Reuters, Associated Press. Satellite image courtesy GeoEye. Illustration courtesy David Cenciotti. We already had an extremely close relationship, and trust and loyalty. Due to operational security concerns, only a few people were involved in the planning of that mission.

That was to alleviate exposure to other individuals of Special Operations Command regularly visiting the agency. They did not bring in the rest of the air crew, and the rest of the ground force, until two and a half weeks before they executed the mission.

Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. These were high-level, the overall concept of what the risk and probability was: all the things the president would want to know to make a decision.

Sometimes the president would ask details. McRaven would speak 90 percent of the time. McRaven is, just the true professional, true leader — and here I am getting side-barred with the vice president. He was genuinely interested in Englen and his family back home. The plan called for using four aircraft: two Chinooks and two Black Hawks, which are a little bit quieter. They emit a smaller signature from a radar standpoint. That was the No. Once they got the word to proceed with rehearsal, that's when they brought the rest of the ground force and the air crews in.

Meanwhile, on the home front…. Over the course of his career, and their marriage, Doug Englen never shared much. Tina didn't know when she'd hear from her husband again, during those busy months away from home. Once, when he'd called to ask how she and their four children were doing, her washing machine was flooding water out their front door.

The fact that her husband had called was. Somebody was always planning or doing something for those guys. Of course, there was no news until Obama made the announcement about Neptune's Spear. And, if we are shot down, we had to make sure we were sterile. Sterile meant no identification, name tags, unit patches, family photos. No wedding rings. Nothing personal, in case they were taken hostage. Their SAR search and rescue plan was in effect. Englen and his fellow special operations aircrew went to their helicopters for final checks that they had nothing personal on board.

Their wedding rings, and everything else, went into their kit bags to stay behind. Many operators wrote letters to be delivered to their loved ones back home, should the worst happen. Englen refused to.

But she refused to think about him getting hurt, and leaving her and their four children. Tina closed her eyes and ears to the possibility and prayed a lot. Behind the scenes, there was friction between the Black Hawk crews and the Chinook crews. Englen, being the planner and flight lead i.

The Chinooks would be there as the backup. Air crew competitiveness ensued. I said, a different airframe should be first in there, versus myself Chinook pilot. The primary plan was for the Chinooks to give the Black Hawks gas on the ground in Pakistan, out in the middle of nowhere.

See you when you get back. That was the famous last quote of the pilot that crashed that helicopter. Crossing into Pakistan was emotional for everyone. The contrast was stark: they were in a completely different country, much more prosperous than Afghanistan. In fact, at all, sometimes. We made it to the objective without really causing too much of a ruckus over the calls. As he landed under the mushroom cloud of the exploding Black Hawk, the flight lead and planner was pissed off.

On the objective, his crew chiefs on the ramp, hopped out do a head count. Plus, remember, we had people already on board, and this gallon fuel tank inside. So there wasn't a whole lot of space on board ," Englen explained. While they were loading up inside, the Chinook was vulnerable. They were on the ground for probably a minute and a half.

It sounds like nothing. Because, I mean, how long does it take operators to run on the back of a Chinook? The mini-gunners, or door gunners, were scanning. They kept an eye on their sector. They saw civilians from the neighborhood around the compound come in from the right side towards the commotion, and kept an eye on them. So, even if we were shot it, it would be hard to even return fire. Not this type of objective.

Turbine engines are running at a constant speed — about 6, rpm revolutions per minute. If they are loaded too quickly, they can bog down a little bit. As soon as the last ground force was on the aircraft, the crew chiefs came in right behind them and ramped up. I mean, we were at the maximum weight that the aircraft could hold," Englen explained. The other Chinook had set up prior to the Black Hawk coming in, shutting the aircraft down and running the fuel hoses out.

That meant they were sitting on the ground vulnerable inside a sovereign nation, after invading its airspace and assaulting a compound. One of the choppers used in the raid crashed during the operation and was subsequently blown up by the SEALs. Military experts speculate that this was done to prevent anyone from getting their hands on the helicopter parts and technology and selling them to foreign countries, such as China, which is rumoured to be developing its own stealth aircraft.

A part of the tail of the helicopter survived the blast, and that is what the chatter about the "stealth" aspects of the aircraft has focused on. Military aviation enthusiasts who have examined the widely disseminated photos of the wreckage, which included the tail mount, or boom, rotor and horizontal stabilizers, insist it bears the hallmarks of a stealth aircraft but none that match any existing helicopter, or at least not one that is widely known about.