After publishing my yesterday’s article about The mysterious helicopter involved in the Osama Bin Laden raid, I’ve been receiving feedbacks by many enthusiasts, experts, analysts, journalists, etc. Among them, the most interesting one came from Adam Roberts of the Economist who left me the following interesting comment:
Hello, I’m a British journalist and was at Bin Laden’s compound yesterday. I picked up a bit of the broken helicopter from a field by the house. By chance it had a serial number on it. No idea if it’s of any use / interest to you, but here goes:
SCFV12A107-3 next line: REV – next line: 6-25-09 (a date maybe?)
Here’s a picture of the piece Adam sent me:
Something new to investigate.
In the meanwhile, I’ve asked Ugo Crisponi of Aviationgraphic.com to draw a sketch of how the Black Helo could look like basing on the few available details seen on pictures (it must be refined, some details probably missing, but it’s quite interesting):
just curious isnt most of the noise assoc. with helios the interaction of
main rotor / tail rotor. The little disc on the pictured has been flying with eurocopters for years and they’re as noisy as you could get
I hear they operate & store them out of the Tonopah NV testing range but they were developed & tested at Area 51. Most recentily they were deployed in Syria for a rescue mission to save some hostages held by ISIL which was uncusessfull because ISIL got wind of the rescue mission early & moved the prisoners before they can rescue them. It was reported there was at least 1 of these stealth helicopters used in the operation. Rumor has it they are pretty hard to fly which actually led to the crash during the bin laden raid & one reason why they aren’t used as much as the standard Blackhawks.