I had two Lycoming T53-L13A engines come apart in 1970 during my tour flying
Hueys in RVN (240th Assault Helicopter Company).

The first one happened at cruise (~100 kts) at perhaps 100 feet AGL while we
were flying east from Bearcat (near Long Thanh) to the coast along highway 1
just southeast of the Gia Ray massif. When the compressor blades let go, it
sounded like an explosion, I thought for a few seconds that we had taken an
RPG. Anyway, the autorotation and successful albeit skidding landing on a
paved highway went exactly like we trained for low-level autorotation.

During the week it took to install a new engine in my bird (67-17565), I
flew other machines assigned to my platoon, one of which did the same thing
to me (don't remember its tail number), although this time we were hovering
from POL (fuel) to the revetment after completing the day's missions. For
this one, I recognized the sounds from the earlier catastrophic compressor
failure so I didn't think about an RPG and just performed a successful
hovering autorotation, just as we trained to do them. This engine failure
came after our formation had flown low and slow in a hard rainstorm back to
Bearcat from the Rung Sat swamps east of Saigon during which it was raining
so hard that we had to fly in a skid at about 40 kts in order to see each
other and to avoid flying into any obstacles (primarily, trees) while our
flight lead navigated home using pilotage.

I always figured that my guardian angel was on the job since both engine
failures came at very nearly optimal moments. The training that the Army
gave us in flight school really prepared me to handle the power failure
situations as in those days we carried almost all autorotations to the
ground. I loved autorotations! I always thought autorotations were the
best way to land a Huey when flying combat assaults primarily because an
approach to a 3 foot hover before landing just served to increase the
exposure time. My mantra was to keep moving and try to avoid flying a
predictable ground track whenever possible, meaning no straight-in
approaches to a hot LZ. Must have worked because despite taking fire I
never took rounds when using these techniques! Of course, some said that I
was a cowboy, but I never got anyone killed so I'm happy with the results.

Thankfully, the Lycoming guys figured what was caused these types of engine
failures and fixed the problem in the L13B, which I flew with until
"retiring" from Army Aviation in 1978.

Cheers,
Leonard Ellis (Greyhound 28)

"Ol Shy & Bashful" wrote in message
ups.com...
It's getting pretty boring here. So, who has done an actual emergency
autorotation and what was the outcome?
As previously posted, I've done at least five with various failures and
all to successful conclusions. Geeez guys....it's Christmas! Can't we
say something or do something to brighten up the spirit of the season?
I have a phyxed wing student who just did a terrible landing recovery
this week and jammed the nose wheel up into the cowling doing about 30K
of damage to a C172SP. Curled the prop and all. Talk about a dampener
to the Xmas spirit?
So, what have you done lately? Anything to brighten up the day?
Ol Shy & Bashful