Helicopter animation question :)

Hey mates. I was just getting interested in Unity and am wondering where I should look if I wanted to make a simple helicopter spinning and crashing with some smoke coming out. Would the animation need to be done in an external application or can it be done in Unity alone? Any links would be helpful . Here is a clip for a movie to give a general idea of
http://youtube.com/watch?v=MhEXXgiIVuY
Any information where I should start would be greatly appreciated. I already have the helicopter (huey) just like the one in the video and would like to replicate that sort of animation