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Opinion | The team functioned well; Question mark - why they failed to get out | Israel today

2022-01-04T21:49:13.637Z


The pilots appear to have absorbed most of the energy from the damage to the water, however the fact that the patrol officer was rescued with a minor injury may indicate that something else caused their deaths • Interpretation


With great certainty, the Air Force already knows how to determine what happened to the bat helicopter last night: a serious, sudden malfunction in the left engine, which led to an emergency landing and the fatal consequences of the incident.

It is not always possible to draw conclusions so decisively and so quickly.

The investigation often takes time - to gather the items and evidence, to look for what failed and to reach the bottom line.

In the present case the Air Force was able to put the puzzle pieces together very quickly.

Probably this was also helped by the fact that the naval patrol officer accompanying the mission survived and testified to what happened in the fateful seconds when a routine flight turned into a fatal disaster.

Parts of the helicopter that reached Haifa Beach, Photo: Michel Dot Com

It seems that from the moment the malfunction occurred, the team functioned optimally.

Despite the mishap - which was also accompanied by a power outage - he was able to land the helicopter on the water and bring it afloat.

Bat helicopters are built for this, and the crews are skilled in these operations - which are naturally much more complicated at night, and in extreme conditions of a complex multi-system malfunction as occurred yesterday.

The search for helicopter parts in Haifa, Photo: Michel Dot Com

The investigation will seek to find out why the pilots were also unable to escape in life.

They appear to have absorbed most of the helicopter's energy from the water, however the fact that the patrol officer was rescued with only a minor injury (a fracture in one of the ribs) may indicate that something else caused their death.

In the IDF, it is customary to return air crews to activity as quickly as possible after an accident so that they do not develop trauma, but it has not yet been determined whether this will be done in the present case, and in any case the officer will be required for medical rehabilitation.

The bat helicopter has a very good safety record.

The IDF has been operating this helicopter for 25 years, in which one tragic incident was recorded earlier: in September 1996, a bat helicopter crashed during a night training off the shores of Nahariya. Socks, killed;

The body of the patrol officer was never located.

Another helicopter was hit by a missile fired by Hezbollah at the naval ship "Hanit" during the Second Lebanon War, and after undergoing repairs was returned to service.

Rescue efforts following the helicopter crash near the shores of Haifa

Bat helicopters jointly serve the air and sea forces.

The one who is responsible for the operation of the helicopters and their competence and the training of the air crews is the Air Force, and the one who is responsible for the missions is the Navy.

The helicopters - which land on assault ships 5, as well as on assault ships 6 that are due to enter operational service in the coming years - allow the Navy to expand its range of operational activities, detect land, air, naval and submarine threats and carry out various rescue operations away from shore.

The Air Force froze the operation of the bat helicopters until the circumstances of the accident were fully clarified, to make sure that it was not a serial malfunction.

This is a routine step taken after any accident or disaster, and sometimes even after "almost injured" incidents.

This, as part of the corps' extreme adherence to safety procedures, which has led in recent decades to a significant reduction in the number of accidents and casualties.

The corps' previous fatal accident was 14 months ago - the crash of a "swallow" plane, in which flight instructor Itai Zeidan and the flower pilot of Yehu Ben-Bassa were killed.

But it is worth looking at this fatal accident from another angle: in recent years, the IDF has received increasing criticism from the Israeli public, or vice versa - a decline in confidence in it. Public trust in the military.

It seems that the consensus around the IDF only increases in times of crisis - wars and operations, or God forbid when there are casualties - and the rest of the time it is often used as a convenient punching bag. Even if part of the criticism is justified, The security of the state and its citizens. Lt. Col. Erez Shahayani and Major Chen Fogel paid for it on Tuesday in their lives; another painful reminder of the heavy price of guarding this country, and those who carry it.

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Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2022-01-04

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