Army gives one of its rarest awards to 5

A bit behind the time – in June the Army gave one of its rarest awards to five aviation crew of a CH-47 after their Chinook was brought down in Afghanistan November 20, 2020. By a hut.

The Broken Wing Award was established in 1968 and is given to Army personnel who show “extraordinary skill recovering an aircraft from an in-flight emergency situation,” and “minimize or prevent aircraft damage or injury to personnel,” according to the Army Safety Awards website.

That night, Army pilot Chief Warrant Officer 3 Ryan Schwend, co-pilot Chief Warrant Officer 2 Eugene Park, and crew members Staff Sgt. Ben Kamalii, Sgt. Andrew Donley-Russell and Sgt. Ty Higgins were moving a relocatable building slung from their Chinook from Kandahar to Marine Corps Camp Dwyer in Afghanistan’s Helmand Valley.

While hovering at 1,000 feet, the load somehow swung upward, hitting the rear rotor of the Chinook with a loud bang and forcing the helicopter into a right bank.

Higgins called for the crew to jettison the load while Park tried to gain control of the aircraft. The load, however, would not fully jettison and was now pinned to the bottom of the Chinook.

Meanwhile, the aircraft itself was sluggish and slow to respond to its controls. If they attempted a landing, they risked a rollover, which could mean the loss of the Chinook, along with everyone on board.

The crew members, with the help of a ground response team, finally cut away the load and began shutdown procedures.

As the rotors slowed, the crew noticed their blades were beginning to sag. The after action report of the incident showed the side wall of the building they carried had collapsed, allowing air to enter and pushing it upward into the blades.

Military Times

The rotors had sustained enough damage that centrifugal motion was all that was keeping them straight, and as soon as the rotors started to slow, they also started to fold. Despite that, the crew put the chopper down without any reported serious injury or lives lost.

You can’t make stuff like this up. There’s reasons why we’re proud of all our chopper crews, and this illustrates why. Damn good thing it’s a heavy lift chopper, able to carry those 10 gigantic brass ones.

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