Another Marine Helicopter Has a 'Hard Landing'

1 killed in Marines helicopter hard landing at Camp Lejeune

http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/03/us/north-carolina-marines-helicopter-death/index.html

A CH-53E apparently experienced a 'hard landing' at Camp Lejeune last night, whereby one Marine was killed.

The Marines of late have taken to report their Class A mishaps as 'hard landings' instead of just calling them crashes. I am sure that aircraft is either in pieces or it is a smoking pile of melted aluminum (53s are notorious for catching fire when they go down).

All models of the CH-53 (A, D, and E) have been notorious widow-makers since the A model was introduced in 1966. I flew the CH-53 A and D, and came real close to buying the farm myself twice. There were so many accidents in those aircraft in the early 1980s that surviving family members of dead aircrew tried filing a product liability lawsuit against Sikorsky.

Bumble Bees and helicopters , neither one are air-worthy.

There were so many accidents in those aircraft in the early 1980s that surviving family members of dead aircrew tried filing a product liability lawsuit against Sikorsky.

The fares doctrine allows military to skate on product liability and this allows our military family members to be fodder for product testing without ANY ramifications for poor design and manufacturing. I had a friend's son who was flying hurricane radar planes out of Biloxi who was killed after taking off because of a failure of a part. They actually sued, but the fares doctrine cut them off at the knees. I understand the policy of not hampering our military, but the military should in contracting with manufacturing a secondary product liability insurance policy which would give every serviceman's family $250,000 for a failure of their product which would be arbitrated. Will not happen, but more will die.