A Helicopter Decapitation on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: Salvator Disi, 62, was decapitated on this day in 2019 while using a power cart to jump start a helicopter in Hernando County, Florida. Its unexpected up-and-down motion caused the rotor blades to strike him.

This kind of fatality is rare, but it does happen. A woman, while on vacation in Las Vegas, exited a tour helicopter while the blades were still spinning. Her hat blew off because of the down wash from the blades. She frantically tried to retrieve her hat and while doing so she ran into the tail rotors. She was killed instantly.

One British man was decapitated by a helicopter tail rotor while "taking a selfie" earlier this year. Source

The most famous case of decapitation by helicopter blades happened on the set of the Twilight Zone movie in 1982. They were filming at night in difficult terrain and three people were killed (two were decapitated) when the pilot couldn’t control the helicopter during the simulated explosions going on all around him. One was actor Vic Morrow and the other two were children he was holding at the time. It was a stupid, senseless accident all because the director wanted a night shot. The children were on set in violation of child labor laws as well. 

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A Helicopter Accident on This Day in History

 

This Day in History: On this day (May 16) in 1977, "a rotor blade broke off a helicopter on the roof of Manhattan’s Pan Am Building after the copter’s landing gear failed, causing it to turn sideways. The blade killed five people. The New York Times reported: 'Whirling like a giant boomerang, the blade struck four people on the roof-top madding pad, killing three instantly, then plunged over the skyscraper’s west parapet. About halfway down the gray tower, the blade crashed into a window and broke in two. One piece of the blade continued to fall, whirling onto Madison Avenue and killing a woman.'” Source

Perhaps the most well-known helicopter accident happened on the set of the Twilight Zone movie. In the early morning hours of July 23, 1982, actors Vic Morrow and seven-year-old Myca Dinh Le, and six-year-old Renee Shin-Yi Chen, were filming on location in California, in an area that was known as Indian Dunes, near Santa Clarita. The helicopter was hovering at approximately 24 feet above them when the heat from special effect pyrotechnic explosions reportedly delaminated the rotor blades and caused the helicopter to crash on top of them, killing all three instantly. Morrow and Le were decapitated and mutilated by the helicopter rotor blades, while Chen was crushed by a helicopter strut.

More recently, basketball great Kobe Bryant and 8 other passengers including his daughter were killed in a helicopter crash in 2020 while flying in heavy fog. Safety experts say that despite the publicity that such accidents draw, helicopter transportation has a good safety record, better than that of small private planes.

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