If you've been searching the internet for photos about the aftermath of the U.S. military raid that took out Osama Bin Laden, you might have paused when you saw some of the wreckage of the helicopter that was left behind by American commandos.
Supposedly it was a top secret, stealth Black Hawk helicopter - what you see here is the tail assembly, which was not blown to bits by the commando team.
The odd looking items on that tail portion would explain why the NAVY Seals tried to blow it up, so nobody could figure out what it was.
The chopper suffered damage when it made a hard landing in the courtyard of the hideout used by Bin Laden and his family.
"Um, that part of the helicopter is like none i have seen," wrote one of my Twitter followers yesterday. "And i worked on MH-53Js in Air Force Spec Ops."
The Army Times reported that helicopter used stealth technology like that of the F-117 stealth fighter, and also used special baffling to hold down on the sound that the helicopter would normally make.
While U.S. officials have not commented on the record about any stealth technology, they did not try to hide the fact that one of the two helicopters used in the raid was blown up after Bin Laden was killed.
"During the raid, we lost one helicopter due to mechanical failure," said a Senior Administration Official during a briefing after President Obama spoke to the nation on Sunday night.
"The aircraft was destroyed by the crew and the assault force and crew members boarded the remaining aircraft to exit the compound," he added.
But they didn't want to follow up on that with any details later in the same conference call.
"My question would be, what was the type of the helicopter that failed? asked one reporter.
"Can’t go into details at this time," said another official.
It's no real surprise that U.S. Special Forces Command would have had some high-tech equipment - but if not for mechanical troubles on this raid - no one would have known anything about it.
