• Helicopters crash near Berlin's Olympic Stadium

    Hannibal Hanschke / AFP - Getty Images

    A policeman stands next to the accident site where two helicopters crashed near the Olympic stadium in Berlin on March 21.

    Hannibal Hanschke / AFP - Getty Images

    Police officers work at the scene where two police helicopters crashed near the Olympic stadium in Berlin.

    Johannes Eisele / AFP - Getty Images

    The wreckage of a police helicopter is seen near the Olympic stadium in Berlin.

    At least one police officer died after two helicopters collided at Berlin's iconic Olympic Stadium during a security exercise, authorities said.  -- Agence France-Presse

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  • Human-powered helicopter closes on Sikorsky Prize

    Patrick Semansky / AP

    University of Maryland engineering student Colin Gore performs a test flight in Baltimore on Wednesday, Feb. 27, 2013, in a one-man, human-powered helicopter that he and fellow students designed and built. The team of undergraduate and graduate students hope to claim the $250,000 American Helicopter Society Sikorsky Prize, which has remained out of reach since it was first offered in 1980. In order to win, a helicopter must fly under human power for at least 60 seconds and momentarily reach an altitude of 3 meters while remaining within a square that is 10 meters by 10 meters.

    Patrick Semansky / AP

    University of Maryland engineering student Colin Gore prepares for a test flight in Baltimore on Wednesday.

    Patrick Semansky / AP

    Related story: Human-powered helicopter breaks record with 50-second flight

  • Helicopter hits crane, crashes onto busy London street

    Victor Jimenez / Getty Images

    Smoke pours from the burning debris of a helicopter which crashed in the Vauxhall district of London on Jan. 16, 2012.

    Carl Court / AFP - Getty Images

    A damaged crane that was hit by a helicopter is pictured following the crash on Jan. 16, 2013.

    Neil Hall / Reuters

    Debris from a crashed helicopter is seen in Vauxhall on Jan. 16, 2013. A helicopter crashed into a crane on top of one of Europe's tallest residential blocks in central London on Wednesday, killing two people as it burst into flames and threw plumes of smoke into the foggy air.

    Courtesy Nic Walker

    A fire burns after a helicopter crashed in Vauxhall on Jan. 16, 2013.

    By Ian Johnston and Alastair Jamieson, NBC News

    LONDON -- Two people were killed and nine others injured when a helicopter apparently hit a crane atop a skyscraper and then crashed on a street in the U.K. capital Wednesday morning, police said.

    The crash happened at 8 a.m. local time (3 a.m. ET) in the South Lambeth area of London.

    In a message on Twitter, London Fire Brigade said they had "rescued a man from a burning car at the scene of the helicopter crash." Read the full story.

    Oli Scarff / Getty Images

    Wreckage at the scene after a helicopter reportedly collided with a crane attached to St Georges Wharf Tower in Vauxhall, on Jan. 16, 2013. According to reports, the helicopter hit the crane before plunging into the road below during the morning rush hour.

    A helicopter's pilot and a bystander on the ground was killed in central London this morning when it hit a crane and fell to the ground in a fiery crash. NBC's Michelle Kosinski reports.

     

  • Jack Guez / AFP - Getty Images

    Dramatic flares at Israeli air show

    An Israeli Boeing AH-64 Apache longbow helicopter launches anti-missile flares during an air show at a graduation ceremony for Israeli pilots at the Hatzerim air base in the Negev desert, near the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, on Dec. 27.

  • Rescuers find one Ugandan copter gunship at crash site in Mount Kenya

    Peter Greste / Reuters

    The injured captain of a Somalia-bound Ugandan attack helicopter lies next to the crash site at Mount Kenya, on Aug. 13. Uganda said on Monday the pilot and four crew of the helicopter that made an emergency landing in Kenya had been rescued but two other gunships and ten crew members were still missing in the same area.

    Reuters -- Uganda said on Monday the pilot and four crew of a Somalia-bound Ugandan attack helicopter that made an emergency landing in Kenya had been rescued but two other gunships and ten crew members were still missing in the same area.

    Poor weather early on Monday hampered a search and rescue operation for the three Russian-built Mi-24 helicopter gunships that went down in the Mount Kenya region on Sunday while en route to reinforcing AU forces in Somalia.

    Felix Kulayigye, a spokesman for the Uganda People's Defence Forces (UPDF), said one pilot managed to send out a distress signal after making an emergency landing.

    Read the full story.

    Peter Greste / Reuters

    A Somalia-bound Ugandan attack helicopter is pictured at Mount Kenya, on Aug. 13.

    Peter Greste / Reuters

    The injured captain of a Somalia-bound Ugandan attack helicopter is strapped on a stretcher at the crash site on Mount Kenya, August 13, 2012.

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  • Germans claim first flight of manned, electric helicopter

    Beate Kern / e-volo

    Thomas Senkel of e-volo flies the e-volo multicopter, a battery-powered helicopter with sixteen motors and rotors.

    By Jim Seida

    A three-man team from Germany has developed, and flown, a personal helicopter that's powered by lithium batteries running sixteen motors and turning sixteen rotors. You can read about it in msnbc.com's Future of Technology blog.  Be sure to check out the video below, too.

    Beate Kern / e-volo

    The propellers create the full lift, and are also responsible for balancing the device on all three axes only by independent speed control of the motors. E-volo from the beginning has been designed entirely as an electrically powered device. Unlike the rotor of a helicopter, the propellers don´t have any pitch control and therefore no wear. These factors make the multicopter mechanically simple, with close to no maintenance necessary.

     

    At the end of October 2011, Thomas Senkel of e-volo made the first manned flight with an e-powered multicopter at an airstrip in the southwest of Germany. The flight lasted one minute and 30 seconds, after which the constructor and test pilot stated: "The flight characteristics are good natured. Without any steering input it would just hover there on the spot". This could be the future of flight, piloting a device as simple as a car.

     

  • Marine rescued in Afghanistan as medevac helicopter comes under fire

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Left: Lance Cpl. Blas Trevino of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, left, holds onto the gunshot wound in his belly and gestures toward his troops as he runs to a medevac helicopter from the U.S. Army's Task Force Lift "Dust Off", Charlie Company 1-214 Aviation Regiment after he got shot in the stomach outside Sangin, in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan, Saturday, June 11. The Army's 'Dust Off' crew needed two attempts to get him out, as they were fired upon and took five rounds of bullets into the tail of their aircraft. Right: Lance Cpl. Blas Trevino of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, shouts out as he is rescued.

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    A large bullet hole is seen on the tail of a Black Hawk helicopter after the U.S. Army's Task Force Lift "Dust Off", Charlie Company 1-214 Aviation Regiment came under fire while rescuing injured Marine Lance Cpl. Blas Trevino after he was shot in the stomach outside Sangin, in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan, Saturday, June 11.

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Lance Cpl. Blas Trevino of the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, gives the thumbs-up to U.S. Army flight medic Sgt. Joe Campbell after arriving at a field hospital at camp Edi on a medevac helicopter.

    By Katie Cannon, Senior Multimedia Editor

    It takes special people to maintain a cool head in these circumstances. To learn more about the Dustoff unit, check out this piece that NPR did a ways back or take a peek at the Dustoff Association's site.

    Update: Photographer Anja Niedringhaus wrote a first-person account of the rescue of Lance Cpl. Blas Trevino. Read her dispatch: Lucky charms and bullet holes in Afghan helicopter.

  • Outside the Frame: A hurt Afghan girl flown on medevac helicopter

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Persia, 7, looks up as she flies onboard a Medevac helicopter from the US Army's Task Force Lift "Dust Off," Charlie Company 1-214 Aviation Regiment to the next military hospital outside Sangin, in the Helmand Province of southern Afghanistan, Tuesday, June 7. Persia received head injuries after falling off a truck and was taken by her father to the next ISAF outpost seeking medical help.

    From Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus:

    It was noon when the call came in to the Army medevac unit I’m embedded with in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. And this time, it wasn’t about a wounded soldier. The Marines were calling about a 7-year old Afghan girl named Persia who had fallen off a truck.The medevac unit, Charlie Company 1-214, sprang into action — in less than five minutes they were airborne. Within a minute of landing, Persia and her father were on our helicopter and heading to Camp Bastion, where her head could be scanned.For Persia, the flight was unreal — she could have been on the moon. She stared at me as if to ask, ”Where are we?” Her father’s face was lined with worry. At one point during our 15-minute flight, Army Chief Spc. Jenny Martinez reached out and put a small, white teddy bear on Persia’s chest. Persia seemed to recognize the toy, but I think she was still in shock and confused about where she was.When we arrived at Camp Bastion, a British army ambulance was waiting at the landing strip, and Persia and her father were taken to the hospital.

  • Task Force Shadow “Dust Off” evacuates an injured Afghan boy

    By Robert Hood

    A photographer working at night might be tempted to shoot with an overpowering strobe. I’m glad AP’s Keven Frayer used existing light for this dramatic scene.

    Kevin Frayer / AP

    Army Spec. Brian Channon stands outside a Black Hawk helicopter from Task Force Shadow "Dust Off", Charlie Company 1-214 Aviation Regiment as it refuels at Camp Dywer in the volatile Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan on Jan. 20, 2011.

    Kevin Frayer / AP

    An injured Afghan boy lies on a stretcher as he is flown out of Camp Dwyer.

  • Massoud Hossaini / AFP - Getty Images

    U.S. Marines from 1st Battalion 8th Marines watch a U.S. Marine CH-53 helicopter drop flares as it leaves Musa Qala in Helmand province on Dec. 14, 2010. The U.S.-led NATO alliance in Afghanistan warned December 13 that foreign soldiers will face further violence in 2011, capping what has been the deadliest year of the war on record.

    U.S. Marine helicopter departs, drops flares in Afghanistan

    By Elena Grothe

    Read more on the outlook in Afghanistan here.

  • Ultimate sacrifice

    David Guttenfelder / AP

    U.S. Air Force pararescuemen ride in the back of their medivac helicopter with the American flag-draped bodies of U.S. soldiers who were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan's Kandahar province on Oct. 10, 2010. The pararescuemen and pilots from the 46th and 26th Expeditionary Rescue Squadrons responded to the attack which killed two American soldiers and wounded three others.

    AP photographer David Guttenfelder was aboard an Air Force Expeditionary Rescue Squadron helicopter that responded to a call about a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle that had been struck by an IED in Afghanistan's Kandahar province.  Two of the American soldiers aboard the armored vehicle were killed, and three had been seriously injured.

    Guttenfelder describes the scene:  “We landed in a huge marijuana field, which is growing everywhere in the area, and I could see as we were coming in that the vehicle was completely destroyed; there was nothing left of it and the soldiers were kneeling by the side of the road with their two fallen colleagues, waiting for the helicopter to land.

      “On the flight back, they took two flags out of the back of the helicopter and unfolded them and carefully took the bodies of the soldiers and placed them in bags and then wrapped them in American flags in the back of the helicopter.  And the helicopter is flying at 150 miles an hour, very low, tactical flying because they’re taking contact often from the enemy.

     “When the pararescue guys were covering the bodies in the back of the helicopter, they had only two flags with them. The wind was whipping through the open window … A medic was unfolding one of the flags and handed it to me to free his hands when
    the wind caught it and it blew out the window and they lost it. So they only had one flag.

    "They were talking to each other on the radios, ‘What are we gonna do?’ One of the pilots had a flag that he kept inside, behind the plate of his flak jacket that he’d kept with him for every deployment he’d ever done – in Iraq, and Afghanistan, he flew over Washington D.C. with it, his children had kissed it and his friends had signed it and he carried it in his flak jacket since he started in the Air Force.  He took it out and passed it to the back of the helicopter and that was one of the flags that they used to cover one of the guys.”

    When asked how the soldiers reacted to him shooting pictures during such a personal, sensitive moment, Guttenfelder said, “The soldiers were as respectful of me as I was of them.

    “I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t think it was important, because it’s not an easy thing to do.”

    Guttenfelder has been covering the war in Afghanistan for nine years. 

    David Guttenfelder / AP

    U.S. soldiers carry the body of one of the two American soldiers killed to a medical evacuation helicopter.

    David Guttenfelder / AP

    Soldiers carry the bodies of fellow soldiers toward the helicopter.

    David Guttenfelder / AP

    U.S. Air Force pararescuemen place the bodies of U.S. soldiers into body bags in the back of their medivac helicopter.

    David Guttenfelder / AP

    U.S. Air Force pararescuemen pass an American flag to one another in the back of their medivac helicopter as they prepare to wrap the bodies.

    David Guttenfelder / AP

    U.S. Air Force pararescuemen wait in the back of the medivac helicopter while the door gunner mans the .50 caliber machine gun.

  • Scott Olson / Getty Images

    U.S. Army medic SGT Tyrone Jordan of Charlotte, NC attached to Dustoff Task Force Shadow of the 101st Combat Aviation Brigade works on a 12-year-old Afghani girl aboard a MEDEVAC helicopter after she was grazed in the face by a bullet September 20, 2010 near Marja, Afghanistan. Task Force Shadow is responsible for evacuating wounded Afghani and Coalition forces as well as local nationals throughout southern Afghanistan.

    Lasting impression

    Can you imagine being a 12-year-old, getting grazed by a bullet and taking what is (I'm guessing) your first trip in an aircraft, surrounded by foreigners? How profound a sensory impression that could make? I think you'd remember vividly it for the rest of your life.

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