The UH-60 Black Hawk during Operation Urgent Fury
In October 1983, the US Army was ordered to launch an immediate military intervention in Grenada, a small Caribbean island nation 70 miles off the coast of Venezuela. This invasion, known as Operation Urgent Fury, was the first significant US military operation since the Vietnam War and the first time UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters were used to help an enemy in combat.
For a twin-engine replacement of the Bell UH-1 “Huey,” the Army’s Utility Tactical Transport Aircraft Systems (UTTAS) required excellent performance, maneuverability, maintainability, reliability, and survivability. These necessary skills were demonstrated during the Grenada campaign by the recently added Black Hawk model to the Army fleet, which helped to preserve innocent lives, prevent more chaos, and restore law and order and government institutions to the island of Grenada.
Badly damaged US Army UH-60A Black Hawk aboard USS Guam (LPH-9)
On October 25, 1983, during “Operation Urgent Fury,” US Navy flight deck crewmen were photographed hosing down a US Army Sikorsky UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter as it landed on the amphibious assault ship USS Guam (LPH-9). On the island of Grenada, anti-aircraft fire struck the helicopter’s engine.
Steve Green, former MOS-6342 Avionics Technician with HMM-261, US Marine Corps (USMC), recalls on Quora;
Very shot up
‘I was there, on the flight deck, in Grenada when this happened. This Army Black Hawk was very shot up, as was the crew. They couldn’t shut off the engines because the controls were shot up so with quick thinking the Navy deck firefighters hosed the engines out. The biggest problem with Black Hawks on ships is they don’t have a blade-folding system so they take up too much space. The 46’s [CH-46 Sea Knight] and 53’s [CH-53 Sea Stallion] can fold their rotor blades and can be parked tightly in the ‘bone’ keeping the deck free. The ‘skids’, Cobra’s and Huey’s have two blades that get secured fore and aft for storage.
‘In this photo, just to the right of the Black Hawk is the port side elevator, once the crew was out, this plane was rolled over to the elevator and taken below to the hangar deck where the rotor blades were removed. Now it was basically out of the way, later one of our 53’s hauling it off the USS Guam LHP-9 (sans rotor head) back to the island.
Like swiss cheese
Green concludes;
‘The Black Hawk can fold its blades; however, it is a manual mechanical process, whereas the 46s and 53s have blade fold motors that fold the blades by holding a switch and can be done in about a minute.
‘Regardless we needed this Army aircraft off the deck and out of the way so the Marine mechanics on the hangar deck took the blades off. It was amazing how many 12.7mm and small arms rounds it took. The drive shaft to the tail rotor was like Swiss cheese and it was still able to get to the Guam, lots of holes in her.’
Photo by JO1 Sundberg