The Chinook helicopter sabotage mystery
Meant to get to this story sooner. It’s a troubling incident that deserves more attention than it’s getting. In a time of war, sabotaging military equipment goes way, way beyond mere vandalism or run-of-the-mill property destruction. The culprits must be caught and punished accordingly. Investigators are now saying it was a deliberate act:
Concluding that damage to two new combat helicopters at the Boeing Co. plant was “a deliberate act,” federal authorities said today they had launched a criminal probe and offered a reward in the hunt for suspects.
U.S. Attorney Patrick L. Meehan said he had assigned a prosecutor to work with criminal investigators from the Defense Department, who now say they believe damage to the Chinook choppers was an act of vandalism.
Agents with the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, which is leading the probe on behalf of the Army, circulated flyers offering employees a $5,000 reward. The helicopters cost $20 million to $30 million apiece and are part of a 458-Chinook contract for Boeing, which shut down operations Tuesday but resumed production today.
“We have determined that this was a deliberate act and not an accident,” said Kenneth S. Maupin, the Defense Department’s lead investigative agent, during a news conference with Meehan outside the battleship-gray facility where authorities toured the Chinook assembly line minutes before addressing the media.
The announcement further intensified suspicion that the potential culprit may be a member of Boeing’s 5,200-member workforce, a combination of unionized and contract employees who work on the sprawling campus south of Philadelphia International Airport in Delaware County.
None of the damaged helicopters – Chinook CH-47Fs – has been deployed overseas. Boeing officials said they believed the problems detected this week were isolated to just two aircraft and did not affect others.
Older Chinook helicopters are in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are critical in such combat zones because their tandem rotors help them reach high altitudes for gear drops and other maneuvers.
While the company has said the damage to the helicopters is not irreparable, Meehan said the incident raises safety concerns for soldiers, economic issues for Boeing, and workforce issues for Boeing employees, who were frozen out of work while production shut down.
“There are soldiers in a very short period of time that will be taking this kind of an aircraft into harm’s way,” Meehan said.
Meehan said he requested the tour of the facility, but would not say what he saw. Damage was said to include severed wires on one aircraft in one case, and a propeller part found in a spot where it did not belong in the other case.
Chilling. Let’s hope the saboteurs are nabbed ASAP.
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Five bucks says the perps are never brought to true justice.
Five more bucks code stink will give them an award.
Time to play “Who packs your parachutes?”, folks.
I hope a full background check for all employees with access to that premises will soon be in order.
To imagine if this went unchecked and this caused the death of our soldier(s).
I am glad that it was caught in time. Hope they find him/her…and i hope even more it was just some disguntled employee…the alternative is precarious indeed.
Hi Soap.
ot
hey soap, make sure you hold back a 5 for me… lol
Thank goodness for final quality control functions.
Here is a typical Dhimmicrat head-in-the-sand response to a potentially very serious problem in his home state:
Do ya think? If not, then Boeing and the unions (Dhimmi’s) there have some serious probs to deal with.
The Weathermen operated like this, and I’ll bet that this incident like the Weather Underground had inside help.
What say y’all?
Nab em & Slab em.
Any Muslims working there?
Subversive spies.
Would another time be more appropriate?
I flew in the Marine Corps version of this aircraft during my extended vacation in Iraq. The CH-46 was the backbone/workhorse of the Marine Air Wing component. I’m sure the U.S. Army depends on their version just as much. It’s going to be very, very hard for the FBI to catch the guilty party, because civilians work on these birds 24/7. Unless they have surveillance, or an eyewitness, I don’t see them pinning the tail on the donkey. The CH-47 is a very large aircraft, and one could do damage to them while hiding inside of them unnoticed by other people or cameras. Maybe they’ll ramp up the security around these aircraft.
The way Seattle and the whole Putrid Sound area has become, it could be any number of people. A network of slime. I’m really getting to dislike my State.
An aircraft mishap would be more likely during wartime, because the U.S. Army mechanics might not catch the damage done to the aircraft. This aircraft has miles, and miles of internal wiring, and tons of avionics. A well-crafted sabotage might go undetected because the brass wants to replace worn out aircraft in a hurry. The CH-47’s might not get the same amount of testing by groundcrews, aircrews, and pilots in wartime verses peacetime. This is because during wartime the aircraft are pushed over, and beyond their original engineered purpose. An example of this would be putting 700 hours a month on an airframe that was only designed for 300 flight hours.
I thought that at first too about my former home spo, but it was at the Philadelphia campus. But anyway very disgusting if deliberate.
Also spo one of the best moves I ever made was to leave Washington State. I got out early (thank God). But Eastern Wa. is ok in my book.
I don’t disagree, but the airport in question is in Philadelphia, not Seattle.
Whoever did this intentionally deserves a rivet right between the eyes by Rosy herself.
Sabotage in time of war, is a capital offense. Most countries punish sabotagers with death. In the U.S., with our laws today, such crimes would be punishable by a suspended sentence, probation and community service. I’m sure Code Pink is cheering them on.
Even in peacetime, the FBI and authorities look hard and deep into this stuff. Happened a couple of times I remember in the seventies, when I was in uniform.
Investiagators were all over the squadron with probes.
They found them. Hope these are caught – and punished.
I don’t know, the Defense Criminal Investigative Service guys are pretty good and ISO records, accurate or altered, will produce some leads. I think the rats will be caught. I just hope they are dealt with harshly. Very harshly.
The saboteurs should be executed by firing squad in a sane country but they’ll probably get 2 1/2 years with good behavior or blame it on getting a “zany” on their prescription meds.
Or maybe they’ll be found out and we’ll have another smack-our-forehead moment.
Absolutely frightning, my men and I relied heavily on the CH 47 family of aircraft to fly from FOB to FOB while we were deployed in Iraq.
You get the sabatours we’ll get the rope.
Thats what I get for reading too late at night. Boing just means Seattle to me. I’m awake now, (but I still don’t like western Washington)………..
Find them, try them, and test the sharpness of the CH 47’s rotors on them.
Devilish scum.
This is truly scary, my hubby will be back there next week and he also relies on the Chinook. The DCIS is good and I do trust though that they will be caught, whether or not they’re brought to justice is another matter as there are so many liberals who dispise the military, but that is my own opinion.
# 8, I wouldn’t be surprised at all.
Having worked on F-111’s back in the mid 80’s, I can tell you that you’d be surprised at the things you can find under aircraft panels when they come back from depot-level maintenance. My favorite was the roll of duct tape.
We always hated getting a jet back from depot-level maintenance. Why?
Because we could send a FMC (Fully Mission Capable) aircraft to Depot, and when it came it back it would be so badly “repaired” that it would take us months to get it back to FMC status again.
All this being said, I’d have to know more about the Chinook incident before calling it sabotage. There has to be more to the story – otherwise I’d just rule it rank incompetence by Boeing and the union.
Sort of an aside, related to screening people who have access – The Brits have let a Jihadist hijacker have a job at Heathrow. I thought we were crazy in the US, the Brits are the canaries in the coal mine.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=566734&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
send them to G-Bay. permanently.
The coward will confess when they sweat him. Can’t wait to see what we do with him.
Find them. Send them to Afghanistan as mine detectors.
Nab’em, gag’em, convict’em, (due process of course – we’re not heathens), stuff’em in a small dark cell in Gitmo!
D.C.I.S.? A new TV series!
Feinstein says “they are doing work Americans won’t do”
Infiltration of defense industries is probably a high priority for this nations enemies. Civil rights crybabies like the ACLU, corrupt union officials, and the false documents industry created by the flood of illegal immigrants makes this infiltration that much easier.
Hang the saboteurs.
Check the Mosque. I mean prayer room.
More likely a liberal.