This brings new meaning to the Internet phrase "pics or it didn't happen."
Reddit user Keggerss posted an image of a Marine Osprey lodged in a precarious angle on a wall in Afghanistan. There he is in front, smoke dangling, drinking Rip It, the energy drink ubiquitous to the combat-zone.
Sometimes things get so bad, you have no choice but to smile and laugh.
Here's the story Keggerss posted with the image, which we (having been deployed and flown on Ospreys) judge to be totally legit [edited for clarity and spelling]:
Just so everyone knows I was a passenger not the pilot.
Story Time.
Now everyone forgive me I'm typing this out on my mobile. This was roughly halfway through my deployment.
My unit had been doing helicopter raids and inserts for months before this happened. So everyone was somewhat used to getting rained on by hydraulic fluid which shoots from everywhere when these things fly.
Somehow you convince yourself that cant be a bad thing.
So we departed our FOB late night and the plane was operating as normal. We had a 45 minute flight. The crew chief looked back and gaveOK.
Now when these land their props rotate and make a loud pop.
This time though it was deafening you knew something was wrong, it felt like the Osprey was having a seizure. It's pitch black you can't tell how far you are from the ground then it hits.
My body was instantly in pain.
As you can see in the picture we landed on a ledge and it pinned the rear hatch of the bird closed. We had to exit out of the right door gunner's exit.
Everybody on the plane was instantly ordered to get into a defensive position. Mortars started coming in about 10 minutes afterwards. This is just a gold mine for the Taliban and a nightmare for us Marines.
There were still other Ospreys around when this happened so what did the pilots of this bird do? They jumped on another Osprey and rode back to the FOB.
Meanwhile we had to protect there plane. I always figured this was one of those things like a captain goes down with his ship. A convoy from a FOB came out and dismantled this plane and loaded it up on trucks and hauled it back roughly a week later.
P. S. RIP IT SHOULD OBVIOUSLY ENDORSE ME
Keggerss said in later comments that tank and harrier units came out to help the grunts protect the downed Osprey.
In the end, it's one of those war stories that could have gone much, much worse.