As an A&P anon I will put in my 2 cents on the Kobe Bryant crash. This helicopter had a max cruise speed of 178mph which is also it's VNE, Velocity
Never Exceed, yet reports are saying that the AC hit the ground at 161 knots or 185 mph. Now, if the pilot is feeling his way around in the fog how does he hit the ground at 185mph. He would be risking damage to the machine by simply exceeding VNE, something no pilot would do, especially if visibility was limited at all.
Freefall is also unlikely. A human being in an aerodynamic dive can't go that fast in free fall. A helicopter has way too much wind drag to hit that speed in free fall. Furthermore, helicopters almost never crash with much forward velocity at all. Watching a few YouTubes will show you how they usually crash.
Two other ways that this AC might hit the ground at that speed. One is if it had lost it's main rotor completely, as in a mid-air collision or a missile strike. Then it might become aerodynamic enough to plummet at that velocity. Choppers simply don't just LOSE their main rotors otherwise. Two, if the cyclic control was somehow jammed forward, the throttle was jammed and the pilot was too stupid to pull collective to raise the AC thereby bleeding off excessive airspeed and giving time for further action to be taken.
Flight recorder data would be the only way they could know the speed on impact as the AC was off of the radar.
Very unlikely the pilot flew into the ground at that speed unless it was deliberate or, possibly, if the main rotor had been separated by something like a missile.
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https://pagesix.com/2020/01/27/kobe-bryants-helicopter-was-flying-dangerously-low-before-fatal-crash/
https://www.flugzeuginfo.net/acdata_php/acdata_s76b_en.php