Military craft and lightning.

Last night around 1a.m. I heard a loud crack which I will assume was lightning and then heard what I could only think was an aircraft crashing from the sky, within 25 minutes I heard aircraft outside my house. Immediately I moved to my backyard where I identified three black helicopters with no insignia heading toward the beach which is about 4 blocks from my house. My question is can a large lightning bolt take down an aircraft or helicopter. Because that is the only thing I could imagine the other helicopters were going to recover. Any other ideas are welcome just wondering what in the world would scramble three helicopters in so short a time.

Hmm found differnt things on google

some hits what i read:

www.aircraftbuyer.com...

www.af.mil...

www.boeing.com...


From this readings i guess the craft could have been ghit and downed by it easily.


Wolve

A lightning bolt could've ignited the fuel.

Originally posted by Kozzy
A lightning bolt could've ignited the fuel.

Kozzy, you'll probably right. This is common thing, happens all the time

fry electrics,fuel ignite (as was posted) ,pilot sapped,weapons aciedentaly fired or ignited,rotors damaged ,engines wrecked and the force of hitting the craft could knock it out the sky

Highly unlikely, I was taught that depending on the size of the aircraft and if it is equiped with the right equipment(can't think of the word right now, but it dissipates the electrical charge from lightning) it can handle the strike no problem.

But than again I have heard of stories of bolts striking holes threw wings

ah ur thinking about how high the resssitance of the equipment and such yes/no?
yeah but u gota rem an apache and such dont have high res metals in em ,i think, imagine if one of the rotor blades got blasted off! ouch
and the thing wi the wings wow talk about unstable