A clip posted on Youtube shows the downing a Turkish AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter with a MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense System).
A video posted online appears to show a Turkish AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter shot down by a Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) militant with an SA-18 MANPADS on May 13.
The clip was posted on Saturday by Gerilla TV, which is associated with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).
Starting at around 4:46 minutes into the footage, you can see a PKK fighter targeting the attack helicopter with a Russian/Soviet 9k38 Igla man-portable infrared homing surface-to-air missile.
The missile hits the chopper that starts to spin and breaks up mid-air before crashing behind a distant hill.
The Turkish Super Cobra was in the area to support Turkish soldiers engaged in clashes with the PKK.
A voice can be heard yelling “Cobra down! Well done!”
According to Rudaw, this is probably the first time the PKK have successfully used a MANPADS.
Impressive: Mi-24 Hind helicopters performing rocket runs at low altitude in Syria
The following videos were filmed in Syria in the last hours and show Mi-24 Hind helicopters (Russian ones, deployed to Latakia along with the rest of the RuAF contingent, according to the first unverified reports), fighting rebels.
And here is another video, showing Syrian rebels shooting at an Mi-24 helicopter with their AK-47s. This footage was allegedly filmed in Latakia.
What looks like a mortar can be briefly spotted in this second video at 0:46: did the Mi-24s attack that position in order to wipe out a mortar possibly threatening the RuAF base at al-Assad International Airport?
H/T to Alessandro Borsetti for sending the links to these interesting videos.
The footage shows the aircraft main landing gear’s right leg collapsing before the aircraft came to a halt.
Update:
According to some of our readers, the pilot involved in the mishap is Viktoria Mekotova (the first and only female pilot in Ukrainian Armed Forces). The incident occurred in 2009 and she began transition to the Ukrainian Navy Be-12 in 2010.
It’s not clear how many Mig-29s are currently operational in Ukraine. Most probably just a handful considered that, back in 2013, 15-20 MiG-29 Fulcrums were more or less active with the Ukrainian Air Force 16 of those were planned to be withdrawn by 2015. Since then, two Fulcrums have been lost, one of those allegedly shot down by a Russian MiG-29.
The following video, filmed by a car dash camera, shows a Ukrainian Mi-17 Hip helicopter buzzing the cars on a highway somewhere near Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth largest town, in the central-eastern part of the country.
Ukrainian helicopters, especially Mi-24 Hind gunships supporting the war against pro-Russia separatists, mainly operate at very low altitude where they can be more effective but at the same time they become more vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire: several Hind helicopters and many other Ukrainian aircraft have been shot down by MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems) in eastern Ukrainian during clashes with Russia-backed militia.
The video in this post was allegedly filmed on Aug. 20, 2014, somewhere near Lugansk where a Ukrainian Mi-24 Hind gunship helicopter was hit and shot down by an anti-aircraft missile while on patrol with another helicopter of the same type.
Both crew members, reportedly Major Oleg Biryukov and Captain Anton Rodionov, died in the crash.
It looks like the Hind was flying at low altitude, when it was hit by a missile: in a matter of seconds the helicopter hit the ground and (probably exploded) with the camera the crew members brought with them in the cockpit among the only surviving things.
The photograph below shows the wreckage of the chopper.
According to the information available on the Internet, the helicopter downed by the pro-Russia separatists was Mi-24P “Yellow 15” from the 7th Army Aviation Regiment, a gunship that had been already hit and damaged by Donetsk People Republic fightersnear Slavyansk.
Several Mi-24 helicopters and many other Ukrainian aircraft have been shot down by MANPADS (Man Portable Air Defense Systems) in eastern Ukrainian during clashes with Russia-backed separatists.
