Back in the early 90s, I was flying a Cessna 140 as a camera plane for a lift coming out of Lakehurst Naval Air Station. The heavy lift unit at Ft. Indiantown Gap was tasked with slinging some Navy aircraft destined for the Air Victory Museum in Medford, NJ.
The F-4, A-7, and A-4 all arrived okay, but on our 4th and final leg, we were flying large circles around a Chinook slinging an A-5 Vigilante that was minus its wings.
Apparently (and I'm no lift master, so I'm relating what I was told), the fuselage weighed in at something like 23,000lbs., but because of the large surface area, no one took into consideration the added force caused by the downdraft from the rotors. About 10 minutes into the flight, the rear sling let go, and the Vigi went tail-first towards the ground. The Chinook went vertical nose-down, and the loadmaster dropped the load. The Chinook went almost upright, and the Vigi plowed into the ground, wiped out a family's swimming pool and fence, but fortunately didn't hit any houses or cause any injuries.
When we got on the ground, an Army Col. confiscated the videotape we shot (it was a regular VHS tape style camera). Although it made the local news, the story was quite subdued compared to what we saw. Ironically, the video we shot has never surfaced, never got released to the networks, etc. We were shooting for a local-access TV show.
Years later, when I director of the NJ State Aviation Museum, I had an opportunity to get a USMC F-4 from Andrews AFB. The Naval Museum at Pensacola (who was at that point in charge of the F-4) scrubbed the entire donation when they learned that the same unit that dropped the Vigi was also slated to lift our F-4.
Jeff