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The mysterious helicopter involved in the Osama Bin Laden raid May 3, 2011

Posted by David Cenciotti in : Aviation, Military Aviation, Osama Bin Laden raid, Stealth Black Hawk , trackback

Part 2: Exclusive new picture and a serial number on a piece of the broken helo

When I read the news reports describing the operation the US Special Forces conducted in Pakistan to catch Osama Bin Laden I wasn’t particularly surprised to read that a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter carrying the Navy Seals crashed. What struck me were actually the pictures that were published by the Daily Mail (thanks to Giuliano Ranieri for the heads up!). They show what should be the remains of the Black Hawk crashed during the raid that killed Bin Laden on May 2, 2011, at Abottaville, north of Islamabad, Pakistan (officially, after experiencing a mechanical fault). Military on board the helicopter escaped safely on another helo while the downed one was destroyed leaving only few parts near the Bin Laden’s compound.

However, the depicted horizontal stabiliser and tail rotor of the wreckage don’t seem to be a any form of H-60. Both the shape and position are not common to either Black Hawks or Apaches helicopters. Noteworthy, the tail rotor has a weird cover that could be anything from a stealth cover, to an armour plate to a noise reduction device.

So, to answer to the many questions I’ve already received on Twitter: it can be either a modified existing type (to such an extent it is almost unrecognizable) or a brand new type (that was in fact destroyed before it could go in the wrong hands). I can’t either completely rule out the possibility that the one depicted in the pictures is not a conventional helicopter but some sort of decoy, an UAV or a reproduction…..

By the way, that’s not the only weird thing in the raid and many details of the story still have to be clarified. For example, official reports mentions four helicopters involved in the operation, without mentioning any support asset: I can’t believe no AWACS (E-3 or E-2) were involved providing the “picture”, as the risk of a Pakistan Air Force reaction was high. Furthermore, did the border radars see the formation entering the Pakistani airspace? If not, most probably it is because radars were deceived/jammed by (prob.) EA-6B or EA-18G flying in the Afghan airspace.

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  • http://cencio4.wordpress.com/ David Cenciotti

    New photo and serial number on a broken piece of the helo available here:
    http://cencio4.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/black-helo-down/

  • aditya

    Abottabad is at an high altitude probably the helicopters were stressed when they had to fly over mountains en-route

  • Gloster McKein
    • Brendo

      That’s still way off. Not only is the rotor hub on the wrong side of the boom but the h-stab is too high and too far aft and the tail boom beaver tail is nowhere near as large as the one in the picture about to date.

      • http://cencio4.wordpress.com/ David Cenciotti

        The rotor hub is on the right side. The weird reverse-angled stabilizers create a sort of visual illusion.

  • Michael Miller

    I think the British journalist should go looking for more parts. I’m sure the ISI or Pakistani military missed more smaller parts. I would also be looking in all directions if the US Military destroyed the helicopter using explosives. You should find parts all over the place in and around a blast radius. I would look in bushes I.E. places you don’t have a good view of the ground.

  • http://www.copswiki.org Ray Lutz

    This story of mechanical difficulty resulting in downing of the copter in the facility struck me as bogus. What about this scenario: remote controlled unmanned copter sent in to bleed off any RPGs and other fire before the manned choppers arrived? Apparently, they received no fire so they had to down it themselves. Feasible? It sounds like a viable tactic to me.

  • Keimpe Bleeker

    The tail rotor section seems a bad and much to simple moke-up to me: I have never seen such tiny ‘blades’ without any mounting parts or construction details. The strange cover of the axis is more looking like a part of a chimney cap, than a part of a sophisticated helo. If the story is real and the fuselage of the helo should be laying behind the wall, than the position of the tail section is also rather strange; it lays upside down if this is caused by touching the (undamaged) wall… Too much questions en no recognizable details at all! Setup to mislead the crowd!

  • Reason Speaking

    Helicopters were flying at 1 AM, and were only carrying crew members. Most likely were not stressed at that temp and weight.

  • dave

    In another picture, you see that a crane lifted this piece over a wall, away from the other, more twisted and mangled wreckage. My guess is, if this isnt from a UAV, they quickly put explosives inside the helo and the tail rotor is all that’s really left. As for the tiny blades, in the picture you can see there are 5, maybe 6 of them to the UH-60′s 4, but what strikes me as odd is the simple shape of the tail rotors blades, not like any LO designs ive seen in the past. All that being said, I can totally believe that SOCOM has stealth-modded, or purpose built stealth helos, and a lot of programs like this stay classified for a while

  • jeff

    i’d assume the wee tail rotor blades are optimized for sound rather than radar, i wouldn’t be surprised if the main rotor had more/smaller blades as well, to keep the tips of both sets from exceeding the sound barrier. it’s interesting to see the forward swept horizontal stabilizer on the tail section, this doesn’t jive with any helo i’ve seen.

    as far as the drone hypothesis, this would have been one huge drone given the size of the tail assembly..

  • marant
    • Keimpe Bleeker

      Still very strange: if the tail section was separated from the fuselage due to the crash on the wall, than such a simple build wall must be damaged in a severe way! Every UH-60 variant is a bit more heavy than a Robinson R22 or so. Other strange thing is the minimal debris on the inner side of the wall; big parts like engines should be recognizable.

      • bjoernen_dk

        The wall has a reinforced concrete framework.

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  • MB

    I have to agree, more blades, smaller shape to cut down on noise. Less speed needed, sharper yet quieter sound emission. The cover appears to have moved with the blades, Im not an aviation expert but I wonder if it creates a pressure difference on either side or muffled the engine noise to be dispersed by the blades. Cant help but call attention to the old scrapped Comanche project, its very different but you cant help but notice a slight similarity to the various tail designs seen during that period, perhaps a continuation of the research in to newer models/types/ or existing hardware.

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  • Reti

    A lot of bad angles in these photos. Terrible. It’s hard to tell anything from them. My first guess is: Hollywood Prop, rather than Helo Prop.

  • Devin K.

    This guy matched up the rotor hub of the H-60 with the stealth helo wreck, as clear as can be. I have said it before between the two of you you guys would have this nailed. Pretty cool other stories with good insight here too. Keep up the great work!
    http://aviationintel.com/?p=760

  • Shaman

    I totally agree with Reti. A Hollywood prop pure and simple. In fact, Osama bin Laden died back in 2002 due to illness. Thought most people knew that by now. Why do you think all those extremely expensive to train, Team 6 Navy Seals were concentrated into one huddled mass within that one helicopter that was shot down. Destroy the evidence/witnesses to the hoax. Nothing new about that. Very old stuff. Been going on long before Lee Harvey (or is it Harvey Lee) Oswald. Even before John Wilkes Booth.

  • http://www.blogmafia.org blogmafia

    Hi I’m Martin I follow your website in a while a really good job thanks.

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