The Aussies lost two Blackhawks and a lot of SAS troopers in a nightime training mission in 1998 or 1999 (I can't remember exact date). Not mechanical failure as far as I know, but I suspect there could be a lot more problems than we hear about.
Us non-mil types are only used to commercial flying which has much wider margins and a lot more time/leeway to cope with mechanical failures. At the sharper end, I think there is an expectation of technical problems - Operation Eagle Claw was planned with extra capacity to cope with some kind of technical problems, although that didn't help in the end.
Since there are no reports of US casualties, they seemed to have got the chopper down OK (whether mechanical or shot down hardly matters) and the Seals showed cool heads in blowing it up pretty effectively to only leave the tail rotor intact. Seems like they had ample spare lift capacity on the other three choppers to get everyone out, so - once again - planning for losses was part of the op.
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Not just on missions
The Aussies lost two Blackhawks and a lot of SAS troopers in a nightime training mission in 1998 or 1999 (I can't remember exact date). Not mechanical failure as far as I know, but I suspect there could be a lot more problems than we hear about.
Us non-mil types are only used to commercial flying which has much wider margins and a lot more time/leeway to cope with mechanical failures. At the sharper end, I think there is an expectation of technical problems - Operation Eagle Claw was planned with extra capacity to cope with some kind of technical problems, although that didn't help in the end.
Since there are no reports of US casualties, they seemed to have got the chopper down OK (whether mechanical or shot down hardly matters) and the Seals showed cool heads in blowing it up pretty effectively to only leave the tail rotor intact. Seems like they had ample spare lift capacity on the other three choppers to get everyone out, so - once again - planning for losses was part of the op.