Sydney black helicopter

Hey I was in the city tonight and i was just wondering, because i've never seen it before...
There was this almost pitch black helicopter flying fairly close to a building in the city, and fairly low. It was making a fair bit of noise and people were looking up etc

What are these black helicopters used for? It was totally black pretty much and was really hard to make out against the night sky.
Not suggesting anything at all, was just wondering if anyone knows what these weird black helicopters are used for generally?

Black helicopters are usually seen in areas where there have been cattle mutilations, but they also seem to show up where ever there have been ufo sightings. Mostly though, they are connected to animal mutilations.

oh really?
This was city, so i don't think it was anything like that really...
But thats interesting anyway.
Are very black helicopters common in everyday use though?

i can tell ya there were 3 of them, 2 had a red flashing light only & the 3rd was completely blacked out & they were circling the area around the Queen Mary 2 & Queen Elizabeth 2 both docked in the harbour at the same time. It was an impressive spectacle & I watched the QM2 sail out at 11pm my jaw on the ground. Those choppers were obviously security detail for this event.

woooo someone else saw it too =D
"event"?
Ohh you mean a ship sailing out?
Okay mystery solved

Yeah it was actually a huge event, that ship is a behemoth, the largest thing ever in our port. The shorelines were packed even at that hour. I watched the QE2 come in this evening too, I never thought such a thing would give me a buzz. Must be gettin old lol.


SMH article

Well guys you got the "black"' and "helicopter" parts correct, you just needed to add "hawk". I'm afraid you were way off on the cattle mutilations though. It was in fact another flight of Army Blackhawk's, and yep they would have been carrying SASR as part of a security cordon for the Cunarder's. On top of which they have probably been working up for at least a week given that Dick Cheney is in town tomorrow. And we all know that means a mass migration of student unionist and hairy, glassy/red eyed people from the Northern coast of NSW.

Oh, and the QM2 may be the largest liner/cruise ship to visit Port Jackson thus far, but she is far from the largest ship to visit Sydney Harbour. That title falls to a bulk carrier (cant remember which). I also remember BHP brought its largest iron ore carrier 'Iron Pacific' to the OS terminal at Circular quay after commisioning about 15 years ago. From memory she was 232,000 tonnes full load, and the largest ship to fly the OZ red ensign up to that time.

your right bozeian BlackHawk is right. i personally worked on one and also flew in one. They were once called LongDarts because of a failure in the tailboom causeing it to dive straight to the ground.. GO GO GADGET LongDart also go go gadget us military at a good piece of crap

Hi,

I don't get all this paranoia surrounding 'black helicopters'. As mentioned above Black Hawks are black, my next door neighbour's twin squirrel is black, heck even airwolf was black :-)
So in other words, am I missing something here? Btw Toby I'm not suggesting you are paranoid about black helicopters, simply that there seems to be a lot of it on here? Surely they are just helicopters that are painted black?

Cheers

Rob

There were black jet rangers (i assume jet rangers, they had that shape) used in the fiming of the Matrix a few years ago. Plus ive seen them around the harbour at other times. I've always assumed they were simply civilian hire choppers. Maybe a quick search of yellowpages.com.au might reveal an answer.
BlackHawks operating around Sydney would more than likely be deploying 4RAR commando's than SAS. Not saying that it wasnt SAS, but 4RAR are based in Sydney (Holsworthy), and are trained in anti terrorism and civilian structure breaching. PLus they have been seen training around Sydney, especially in the lead up to the 2000 Olympics.

Fair point BrAinOfJ Blackhawks could well be carrying 4RAR, although SASR deploy to Sydney far more regularly than the public are aware of. I often saw them when I was with 1 Commando in the early 90's. They were usually carring out "special jobs", so you can gather why the lack of advertisement. Also, the roles of the Commando's has changed a lot since then and its difficult to see why both they and SASR have a hand in anti/counter terrorism work. Given that there is (or soon will be) an east coast SASR contingent at Holsworty it seems a doubling up of resources. Then again the line between the two has become somewhat blurred since AfG/Iraq.

Let me just clear up something, the Blackhawks are not named for there colour as someone here suggested. The reason they appeared 'black' was due to there standard three tone camouflage against a night sky, whilst running in blackout mode. This means no external or internal lighting except for an anti collision beacon, and that is used only in urban areas to warn civilian aircraft.

Oh HOVERAUTO, the tail boom failure you mentioned might be the auto trim in the horizontal stab going on the blink. Its a design flaw that Sikorsky never thought to put a warning indicator in the cockpit in the event of said failure. If the pilot doesnt realise whats happened and takes corrective action quick, then its "hello ground!"

LEE.