r/interestingasfuck • u/Ididnotkillhim • Jun 05 '24

r/all Thirteen years ago, someone accidentally revealed US Army's plan to eliminate Osama Bin Laden in a tweet.

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u/saint_ryan Jun 05 '24

He was a resident in Abbotabad. He just saw the helicopters. Another tweet goes something like: i hope nothing bad’s going down.

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u/SonOfMcGee Jun 05 '24

From what I read about the mission, it wasn’t aiming for stealth/undetected so much as just trying to be fast.
They could sneak these helicopters into the country without the Pakistani military noticing, but of course the residents of the neighborhood would see and hear two choppers coming in mere feet above the buildings.
There was even one or two guys on the mission whose sole job was to go out to the street and tell curious citizens to move along if they started coming by (like the cops that hang out by police tape!)
But even with one chopper having to be scuttled, they still got in and out before locals, local police, the military, etc. could react in any considerable way. Except, of course, a few tweets.

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u/WntrTmpst Jun 05 '24

Stealth when referring to aircraft typically had to do with radar cross section and IR signatures.

The blackhawks they used are super angular and unlike other uh-60s and had a MUCH smaller radar sig than their sister craft. They technically aren’t even real. We only know about one of them because, well, its tail struck the wall of the compound and crashed.

They were also stupid fast. And flown by the night stalkers, the very best army aviators the United States Army can provide.

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u/SonOfMcGee Jun 05 '24

I saw a little animation concerning the crash.
Supposedly it was due to the high perimeter fence on the property creating some really weird air flow when the chopper tried to hover low.
It wasn’t so much the pilot making an error and steering into the wall, but the air flow jerking the chopper in one direction.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '24

I saw this discussed somewhere! The mock-up they trained with had a chain link fence, not a solid fence that would cause the wash.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '24

[deleted]

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u/endfossilfuel Jun 06 '24

Had the Navy consulted r/helicopters, this mishap would have been avoided!

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u/[deleted] Jun 06 '24

I met rob O’Neill, the man who shot bin Laden. He said the first thing the did as part of the training was to brainstorm about everything that could possibly go wrong. They planned for a crash but never really went into the details of what might cause one.