A YouTube video showing an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter crashing is of a real incident that happened Feb. 6 in Paktika province, Afghanistan, the Stars and Stripes confirmed.
The video shows the Apache fly low over the outpost, do a 180 and then slam its belly into the ground before losing control. A description with the video says the helicopter pilot was performing a “return to target” maneuver.
ISAF officials are investigating the crash, and who captured and posted the video, the Stripes reported.
As of this posting, the video had been viewed on YouTube more than 893,00 times.
Amazingly, no one on the ground was injured and the two pilots on board survived.
That shouldn’t make the incident a laughing matter. As Sydney J. Freedberg Jr. pointed out at Aol Defense, aircraft crashes are the single largest cause of accidental deaths for U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
