The tail is definately chopped off by the rotor, the a/c came in kinda
sideways and ripped the skids off. That is what you see under the tail boom.
You will not necessarily see noticable damage to the blades in this type of
strike untill you look up close. If he would have hit tail low, the "rip"
damage to the tail boom would have been upward instead of to the right,
which is consistant with rotor direction on Hueys. Also notice one of the
push pull rods is broken off the mast. But due to the blades flexing that
low to take off the tail boom he must have had low rotor rpm so it is
possible that he was in an autorotation when he was coming down, engine
failure or t/r failure. Looks like they are trying to salvage anything of
value before they are lifted out, since they are all on the tail lifting the
nose, maybe to get the FLIR equipment from under the nose.

"Griffin 704" wrote in message
om...
If I'm not mistaken these are photos of UH-1N from HMLA-169 that
crashed at Jalibah FARP on 30 Mar 2003, killing the pilot Capt. Aaron
J. Contreras, Crew Chief Sgt. Michael V. Lalush and Sgt. Brian D.
McGinnis.

The second photo you will see on the nose just above the pilots chin
bubble, "Crew Chief M. Lalush". The A/C crashed on takeoff.