I was there, on the flight deck, in Grenada when this happened. I took this photo. This Army Blackhawk was very shot up, as was the crew. I’ve read other comments here that I don’t know are true or not but what I saw…They limped in and set down.

They couldn’t shut off the engines because the controls were shot up so with quick thinking the Navy deck fire fighters hosed the engines out. I have subsequent photos showing getting the men out and onto stretchers.

The biggest problem with Blackhawks on ships is they don’t have a blade-folding system so they take up too much space. The 46’s and 53’s can fold their rotor blades and can be parked tightly in the ‘bone’ keeping the deck free.

The ‘skids’, Cobra’s and Huey’s have two blades that get secured for and aft for storage. In this photo, just to the right of the Blackhawk is the port side elevator, once the crew was out, this plane was rolled over to the elevator and taken below to the hanger deck where the rotor blades were removed.

Now it was basically out of the way, later one of our 53’s hauling it off the USS Guam LHP-9 (sans rotor head) back to the island. I have photos of all of this.

As promised here are a few more shots.

Little out of sequence but, 53 hauling the Blackhawk off the Deck (no rotor blades) and the Blackhawk coming in to land.

As many have commented that the Blackhawk can fold it’s blades perhaps that is true, however it is a manual mechanical process, where as the 46’s and 53’s have blade fold motors that will fold the blades by holding a switch and can be done in about a minute.

Regardless we needed this Army aircraft off the deck and out of the way so the Marine mechanics on the hanger deck took the blades off. It was amazing how many 12.7mm and small arms rounds it took. The drive shaft to the tail rotor was like swiss cheese and it was still able to get to the Guam, lots of holes in her.