August 12th 2017 the police helicopter that was surveilling the Charlottesville "Unite the right" rally crashed, killing both officers on-board. The pilot was 48 year old Lt. H. Jay Cullen and commander of the Virginia State Police Aviation unit. Also on board was Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates, 40.

https://wtop.com/virginia/2020/05/report-points-to-aerodynamic-condition-in-deadly-va-police-helicopter-crash/

The write up suggests the helicopters last radar contact had it at 2300ft, travelling at 34mph. There were no mayday calls before it crash landed and burned up. The ostensible reason for the crash was put on a condition called a "Vortex ring state", to which the pilot "knew about" but had no "Official training on for that specific helicopter".

Reading a little more about vortex ring states simply from Wikipedia there is the following:

"The vortex ring state is a dangerous aerodynamic condition that may arise in helicopter flight, when a vortex ring system engulfs the rotor causing severe loss of lift. Vortex ring state is sometimes referred to as settling with power. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sees these terms as synonymous, whereas Transport Canada sees them as two different phenomena.[2]

This condition also occurs with tiltrotors, and was responsible for an accident involving a V-22 Osprey. Vortex ring state caused the loss of a heavily modified MH-60 helicopter during Operation Neptune Spear, the 2011 raid in which Osama bin Laden was killed.[3]"

To correct your way out of this condition, you:

The signs of settling with power are a vibration in the main rotor system[4] followed by an increasing sink rate and possibly a decrease of cyclic authority.[5]

In single rotor helicopters, the vortex ring state can be corrected by moving the cyclic control in any direction, which controls the pitch angle of the rotor blade, slightly pitching nose down, and establishing forward flight.

It struck me as irregular that something that can be cleared by "moving the cyclic control in any direction" would be beyond the capabilities of an air commander, and that if it was as dangerous as presented then it would be standard practice to train on how to deal with it.

I went to find the final NTSB report as noted here:

https://www.nbc29.com/2020/07/15/ntsb-releases-final-report-fatal-vsp-helicopter-crash/

Which was dead and a broken link. So I tried searching for it manually by accident date on the NTSB itself and it was missing. So I grabbed a still frame of the report header from local news and entered the exact report number which is ERA17FA274, and was told that was now on a new server. Clicking on the new server gives an error message.

This link details how to pull out from a vortex ring state:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjeRSDsy-nE

It suggests you lose 20-50ft in dealing with it....

I eventually found the report here:

http://www.kathrynsreport.com/2020/05/loss-of-control-in-flight-bell-407.html

What's interesting in the report is it states among other things:

The nonvolatile memory from the ECU was successfully downloaded. About 20 seconds of parametric data, which included rotor speed, torque, collective position, gas generator speed, and absolute ambient pressure, were recorded at the end of flight. The ECU data revealed an increase in torque, from 54% to 104%, immediately before the helicopter's descent. The ECU data also indicated that, between 1648:18 and 1648:20, the collective position decreased from 40% to 14% and that, during the next second, the collective position increased to about 30%. Even as the collective continued to increase to a peak of 68% by 1648:31, the helicopter's altitude decreased, indicating that the helicopter did not respond to the increase in collective.

A video study determined the motion of the helicopter based on the security camera video, which captured about 10 seconds of the helicopter's descent but not the beginning of the descent, and a sequence of four still photographs, which were taken during a 2-second period. The video study indicated that, according to the security camera video, the helicopter was descending with an estimated vertical acceleration of 12 ± 1.5 ft/s2. The photographs indicated that the estimated yaw rate of the helicopter about 20 seconds before impact was at least 92° ± 5° per second in the clockwise direction. The helicopter had already started descending at the time that this estimated yaw rate occurred. The helicopter tail structure appeared undamaged in the photographs.

After 1648:16, the helicopter's low forward speed while descending put it in or near a region conducive to a vortex ring state, which is an aerodynamic condition that occurs when the helicopter descends at the downward speed of its own vortex wake. The vortex system accumulates, building in strength and producing increased downwash through the main rotor. The rotor, operating in a high downwash field, is unable to arrest the helicopter's descent rate, even with increased collective. Even though the collective was raised after 1648:20, the helicopter's altitude did not increase. The security camera video and the photographs of the descent, which were determined to be after 1648:22, showed that the helicopter rolled to the left, between 30-57 degrees, as it was spinning to the right.

The report goes on to basically list what a ring state condition is, that collective was applied, but clearly the helicopter did not respond.

I didn't have time to go into this any deeper but a few questions stood out to me.

How many times has this happened before and in what circumstances? Wiki answered the Osama Bin Laden team who died did so in apparently similar circumstances.

In the article an unusual emphasis is placed on the pilot (An air commander no less) not knowing about how to correct for ring state vortex for that specific model of helicopter. This seems like dissembling/interference.

The report states the helicopter collective was increased appropriately but had no effect.

There were no mayday calls.

I can't get at the NTSB report from the NTSB.

The helicopter had last been inspected 17h prior to flight.

I feel like the officers who died deserve more than to be memory holed. Any aviators here who can share input?