February 12, 2004

One military goose is quoted as stating “We heard the rotors hit the tree. They were flying around doing mock exercises and ended up having to do a real one.”

Clearly the solution is this. Helicopters are designed to fly up in the sky. They are not speederbikes from Return of the Jedi. You don’t race them through forests, whether on the forest moon of Endor or indeed here on earth.

It seems to me that these Blackhawk helicopters crash more often than Microsoft Windows. They are literally dropping out of the sky faster than Scandinavians at the X Games. This happens so often they even made a movie about Blackhawk helicopters crashing , imaginatively titled ‘Blackhawk Down’. This movie starred Orlando Bloom as an elf and a green plastic Eric Bana. 5 stars. Bana incidentally won the role in this film due to his searing performance in another helicopter movie , “Chopper”.

I get weary of reading about these incompetent Blackhawks crashing all the time and taking up valuable news time - time which could better be allocated to baby pandas at zoos or monkeys terrorizing villages in far off lands.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that Blackhawks should only make the nightly news if they actually complete a successful flight. This way we’d only have to read about them once or twice a year.

Ol