Veterans, Favorite Helicopter?
For me it was the Loach. (Little Bird.) Super manueverable, very fast. Did quite a bit of Aerial Photography/Recon. attached to a "Chicken Strap," while standing out on the skid. (84 Bravo/Combat photographer.)
Liked the Skychief, for the same reasons.
Huey's okay.
Blackhawks, just coming in to Service, when I ETS'd. Limited flight time.
Brother, an 11 year Combat Blackhawk pilot with the 160th SOAR, 101st. Obviously, extensive flight time.
The very first Blackhawk pilot to go through the 101st "Air Assault," ground school.
Flying hot rodded Medevacs, out West now.
Would have/and tried to re-up for Helicopter Flight school, but found out my eyes were screwed. (20/20 when I went in 5 years previous.) Exposed to too many chemicals. 54 Echo (NBC) as well as my primary MOS.
Quite coincidentally, a helocopter flying over, just now.
What were your favorite choppers/birds to fly on?
Please share, if you would.
Liked the Skychief, for the same reasons.
Huey's okay.
Blackhawks, just coming in to Service, when I ETS'd. Limited flight time.
Brother, an 11 year Combat Blackhawk pilot with the 160th SOAR, 101st. Obviously, extensive flight time.
The very first Blackhawk pilot to go through the 101st "Air Assault," ground school.
Flying hot rodded Medevacs, out West now.
Would have/and tried to re-up for Helicopter Flight school, but found out my eyes were screwed. (20/20 when I went in 5 years previous.) Exposed to too many chemicals. 54 Echo (NBC) as well as my primary MOS.
Quite coincidentally, a helocopter flying over, just now.
What were your favorite choppers/birds to fly on?
Please share, if you would.
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UH-1s Hueys and the numerous variations of them.
Worst: Jolly greens.0 -
NightStalker sent me some videos of him flying a Little Bird as "bait" to draw ground fire for the gunships close behind. I've never flown in one, but I sat in a Loach at an airshow once. There isn't much to hide behind when some one is shooting at you.
After watching that, I know why that boy ain't right in the head. I told him there is a marked difference between being brave, stupid, and an Adrenaline addict. Laughing, he told me he always walked away from the ones that went down. I told him there is also "damned lucky" too!0 -
More war stories...
When I was a FAC for the 173rd ABn, I often flew top cover for a "Pink" team consisting of the Loach (the white part) and a pair of Huey gunships (the red) on missions where the Loach would probe for bad guys and if they "found" any, the gun ships would roll in. If they got into something the gun ships couldn't handle, or any of the three got shot down, I was there to call in airstrikes.
I once watched a Loach drop into and fly through a tunnel through the trees. Treetops touching over his head and no way out except ahead. Predictably, he "found" bad guys in there - who had to be so astounded to see a helicopter appear in there that they never got off a shot - or missed. It led to an interesting afternoon.0 -
Re: Chinook Gunship- yeah, they built 4 ACH-47s, mid 1960s. Chin turret with a 40mm grenade launcher, 2.75 inch rocket pods, fixed 20mm cannon and 3 50 calibers.
As far as fun helicopters, there was a tiny little aircraft only used to train pilots- the TH-55 Osage- better known as the Mattel Messerschmitt.
Weighed less than 900 lbs empty- incredibly nimble and responsive in a hover. 180 hp Lycoming piston engine.0 -
For me it was none. Being in the Navy and being on a destroyer a helo meant only one of two things neither good. It was either someone was hurt really baad and had to be evacuated to a carrier or it was a replenishment which meant humping boxes or 5/54 rounds below deck. At 74 lbs a piece 5/54 were a chore. 0 -
gotta agree with above, rapelled out of a few hueys, and got life flighted on blackhawk, would prefer my next one just stay on the ground to be looked at... 0 -
Apache. They use to come down the Hudson river just before Army/Navy game time and pull the stick at Trophy Point and you never heard them coming. In a split second they were on you. I think they had a Whisper mode and could do a 360 upside down. I believe they had that multi-barreled cannon mounted underneath.
One of my old bosses Col Mike Krisman USMA '39 use to say "Just think Ray one well placed 30-06 and there goes Millions of Dollars in a flash." I don't know if he was pulling my leg or not. Sure looked like a lot of armor on that thing to me.
As I recall there was a large camera mounted under nose on a turret. I think they used it for mapping and it was tied into pilots helmet to be used like a gun sight for the multi-barreled cannon.0 -
Having ridden/flown in many over the years of my military service, but know not very much about how they work or why I would list them like this
1. I love the sound of a Huey coming in to pick you up. First helicopter I ever flew in.
2. Black-hawk , very fast for it's size, comfortable to fly in, felt very stable in flight.
3. Chinook, the work horse, could do it all. Never like riding in one. The first one I ever flew in I kind of felt uneasy when I saw the Crew Chief walking around with a wrench tightening lose fittings that were leaking fluids...
My oldest daughter was a Corpsman assigned to a Marine outfit out of Cheery Point back in 2005 in Iraq. There mission was doing casualty extraction medivacs. Her aircraft was one of the shorten versions of a Chinook. She said they had a lot of problems with it, and had to land in the middle of no where once, and wait for another ride, while the Chinook was swing loaded back to their base by a bigger Chinook. Less then a month after she returned to the States the Chinook she had been assigned to crashed killing all on board...
Trinity +++0 -
The Apache series had frangible boron silicate fiber armor panels added to it - designed to absorb and disperse the impact of up to a 23mm ZSU AA platform shell - fired from a twin barrel ground mount or a mobile quad mount - usually deployed at the points of a star pattern per Russian doctrine...
I would not call it bullet proof or body armor per see - as it was designed to shatter and ablate allowing escape and evasion - but did not allow you to loiter or stay in the fight...
Later the though was to protect the crew with a ceramic or titanium bathtub similar in execution to the A10 warthog...
Later on the longbow and stealth or something whisper models many attachments and sensors were mounted on or hung from the frame - which greatly enhanced it's capabilities but such items had a battle shelf life of seconds - being unprotected and easily destroyed.
Certainly jet aircraft and rotary aircraft like a helo have inherent vulnerability - and one well placed rifle round can turn the engine or rotors into a large grenade and the airframe into a non flying brick
Mike0 -
The Bell AH-1 Cobra...A/K/A the Snake...When your in the bush...nothing was more comforting than having a Snake roaming in your AO... 0 -
Favorite? Not a fan of choppers. Worked maintenance on fighter jets during my time in service. My assigned F-4 hit a buzzard over the North Carolina mountains and came back to base in flight emergency. The bird went right through the left wing of aircraft and I spent a month in hanger making repairs.
During that month, there was a helicopter in the next hanger over from me that was undergoing service. A young newly wed crew chief was pulling safety pins from the birds main landing struts and the chopper collapsed right on top of the poor soul. I heard a lot of commotion. Sirens and people making a lot of noise next door and I went in to see what it was about. What I witnessed that day will stick with me for the rest of my life! The guy had been cut in half. Blood and guts! Honestly, I cannot even remember what type of helicopter it was. Just never cared for that mode of flight ever since.0 -
Favorite? Not a fan of choppers. Worked maintenance on fighter jets during my time in service. My assigned F-4 hit a buzzard over the North Carolina mountains and came back to base in flight emergency. The bird went right through the left wing of aircraft and I spent a month in hanger making repairs.
During that month, there was a helicopter in the next hanger over from me that was undergoing service. A young newly wed crew chief was pulling safety pins from the birds main landing struts and the chopper collapsed right on top of the poor soul. I heard a lot of commotion. Sirens and people making a lot of noise next door and I went in to see what it was about. What I witnessed that day will stick with me for the rest of my life! The guy had been cut in half. Blood and guts! Honestly, I cannot even remember what type of helicopter it was. Just never cared for that mode of flight ever since.0 -
Blackhawk - supposedly one of the most surviveable helicopters in a crash.
Fixed, impact absorbing landing gear.
I know my Brother came away alive in one after Desert Storm, doing Delta inserts with the 160th SOAR.
Nosed into a dune doing nap of the earth, wearing night vision. (Sand storm blew through, saw all green.) Flipped/cartwheeled 5 times. Saw photo's his Bro's took the next morning of the wreakage. No one should have survived that.0 -
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Mike0 -
Junkballer wrote:I'd have to say a Huey Med-Evac myself after having personal experience with one long ago
Yup, only one I rode in back in 1966.0 -
I had 5 Apaches fly over the house today and they all looked like they were loaded for bear. Those little stubby wings were bristling with stuff hangin' off of 'em. When I saw 'em flying towards me I was wondering who I pissed off! :shock: 0
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