{"id":620465,"date":"2026-06-04T08:46:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/620465\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T08:46:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:46:09","slug":"royal-navy-helicopter-crash-investigations-continue-in-devon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/620465\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Navy helicopter crash investigations continue in Devon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Tim Ripley, editor of Defence Eye, said the principal role of Merlin Mk4s was to carry Royal Marines into battle, describing the aircraft as a &#8220;go anywhere helicopter&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He said Merlins were first used by the Royal Air Force in 2001 before being transferred to the marines a decade ago.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ripley added the helicopter had three engines, which while unusual meant it had more speed and better manoeuvrability when flying around battlefields at low level.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Flying military helicopters at night, even on home turf, is inherently dangerous,&#8221; Ripley said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;There is a risk that comes with this type of flying helicopters at night and at low level.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a dangerous activity wherever you do it, let alone in a foreign battlefield.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tim Ripley, editor of Defence Eye, said the principal role of Merlin Mk4s was to carry Royal Marines&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620466,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-620465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=620465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620465\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}