Illustrative image. (royalnavy.mod.uk)
One of the three aging Sea King helicopters donated by the United Kingdom to Ukrainian Naval Aviation has crashed at Kulbakine Air Base in the Mykolaiv Region.
The helicopter crash was confirmed based on a ruling by a court in Mykolaiv, which took place on February 22. According to official case documents, the helicopter experienced strong vibrations immediately after taking off from Kulbakine, climbing only to an altitude of five to seven meters before it began spinning uncontrollably and lost altitude. It then hit the ground.
The crew sustained minor to moderate injuries, while the helicopter was seriously damaged as a result of the violent crash.
The Westland WS-61 Sea King is a British licence-built version of the American Sikorsky S-61 helicopter of the same name, built by Westland Helicopters from 1969 to 1995. The Royal Air Force passed helicopters of this type out of service in 2015, and the Royal Navy followed suit in 2018.
In November of 2022, in response to the Russian special military operation, the UK announced that it was donating three former Royal Navy Sea Kings to Ukraine. The helicopters were all delivered between January and May of 2023.
Germany agreed to send 6 further Sea Kings to Ukraine in January of 2024. However, it is unclear if any of the helicopters have been delivered yet.
The Sea King helicopters supplied to Ukraine were mainly equipped for naval search and rescue (SAR) missions. However, recent reports revealed that both the UK and Germany were working to upgrade the helicopters with advanced missile systems.
The helicopters will supposedly be armed with Brimstone 2 and Marte ER radar-guided missiles, with a range of over 40 and 100 kilometers, respectively.
It’s worth noting that this may not be the first Ukrainian loss of a Sea King helicopter. In February of 2024, it was reported that at least one such helicopter was hit by a Russian strike in an air base in the Poltava Region.
Most of the Ukrainian Naval Aviation has been already wiped out by the Russian military. The operations of what’s left of the fleet remain limited to transportation and SAR. British and German attempts to rebuild the force with aging helicopters are too ambitious, to say the least.
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oink oink oink
you get what you pay for.
those head choppers must have been built by british leyland.
if anything the sea kings are worse than anything british leyland built – and that’s saying something. almost as bad as lucas….
when i was a kid, i bought an mg midget for 100 bucks and on the 4th of july, would pop the hood, fire it up and watch its lucas ignition make fireworks.
boomer ? 🙂
a serious problem with nato is having countries run by half wits emboldened beyond logic due to their association with the zionist organization.
garbage in, garbage out…… ashes to ashes and junk to junk.
more worthless crap from pirate rock. poor ukrappers never had a chance with losers from natostan “backing” their nazi a$$€$