Ever Kill..............

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..............A rabbit by mistake? And not be aware of it till days later?

Once in my younger days as a bold intrepid aviator for the US Army, I was assigned to ferry a huey from Budingen where stationed to Hanau Army Airfield where our division maintence facilities were.

Hanau was an interesting place. During WWII it was a secret Luftwaffe airfield. Secret by virtue of the fact that the hangers and other things were underground, and during the day when allied planes were overhead the runway and surrounding fields were flooded to a depth of a couple of feet. Looked just like a lake. Which in essence it was.

After that part of Germany was overrun and occupied by the Americans, it was used by them as their airfield and may be even today. Nice runways poured and hanger facilities built right on top of the underground hangers. One interesting story said that once a Stuka tail rudder floated right up through the wooden hanger floor, because the old hangers were just flooded by the americans with all the equipment and planes still in place.

Any hoo as stated, I was assigned to fly a bird down for maintenance we could not preform, hitch a ride back and a couple of days later go back and fly it home.
Nothing unusual at all. A nice little 30 minute flight each way, admiring the neat German countryside as we beat our way through the air.

A couple of days later the Major in charge of our maintenance called me in his office and asked if I had dragged the tail stinger on landing at Hanau. Not to my knowledge replied I. And you could always tell when this happened because the tail stinger was a 1 1/2 in thick 2 to 3 foot long piece of metal placed below the tail rotor for exactly the purpose of preventing you from putting said rotor in the ground and killing the plane and possible everyone else within a 50 yard radius. The stinger would spring you back up a little and was very noticeable. Of course if you were really intent on crashing you could get past this slight impediment. But, no, I had no memory of anything of the sort happening. Nor did my co-pilot, a Viet Vet with as much experience as I.

You didn't have a tail rotor strike, asked the Major. To which, of course, our reply was no.

Well you didn't post flight the plane then did you he asked? We certainly did, was the reply, as this was as automatic as breathing to us.

Let's walk out to the plane, sayeth Major. Curious we followed him to the flight line to the bird in question.

"Look there" instructed Major.

And there, to our wondering eyes, at a point about 1 1/2 feet from the hub of the tail rotor, each blade of which is 5 feet long and at the lowest point of a parked huey the tail rotor reaches is about 5 feet off the ground, so the hub is about 10 feet off the ground, embedded in the leading edge of the blade was the remains of bunny teeth, fur, and blood .

Now I don't know how high a German Bunny can hop, but even considering that the tail rotor was within a foot of the ground, that rabbit had to be at least 5 feet in the air when I dispatched him to bunny heaven .

I just wonder what the poor rabbit's last thoughts were?