What a fantastic Day at Boeing’s Museum of Flight. It was American Heroes Air Show at the museum. A day dedicated to the men and women that keep America safe by protecting our borders, fighting crime, rescuing us when we are lost or in peril, and saving lives when immediate medical care is required.
The morning started out very slowly. With less than ideal weather over Boeing Field, but the people still arrived early (before 7:00 AM) to watch and photograph the helicopters as they arrived. All were scheduled to arrive between 7:30 and 10:00 AM. Breakwater Insurance was on hand to provide complementary coffee, hot chocolate and muffins for the small crowd that had arrived 3 hours before the museum opened, to watch these wonderful aircraft arrive. They remained outside, in the weather serving the crowd late into the morning. That was appreciated.
We’d heard one helicopter transit the airfield above the clouds, so there was a brief bit of excitement, but after 10 minutes, we didn’t hear it any longer, and it was gone. People didn’t give up though, and at 8:30 AM, the thrilling arrival of the first helicopter via air (A King-5 news helicopter arrived before hand, on a trailer…. much to the crowds disappointment!).
First to arrive was the US Coast Guard in their short-range rescue helicopter, the Aérospatiale HH-65A Dolphin. 
They made a quick approach down the main runway, and then landed just outside the tarmac gates for the museum.
Not more than 10 minutes later, the second USCG helicopter arrived to the field:
To say that it arrived with a lot more flare than the other helicopters that morning, would not be an overstatement.
Once it had established over, the leading blades were creating just the right disturbance in the air, to create these contrails. And I’m pretty sure they were NOT splaying chemicals or conducting other experiments upon us with the contrails (that’s a contrail folks, not one of those mythical chemtrails). Unfortunately, I did not get any photos with the contrail in shark focus. :/
Not long after the HH-60J was shut down on the taxiway, a Eurocopter AS350 arrived, and was directed to the landing area.
By now it was 8:35 AM, and the private museum members only presentation of the newly restored HH-52 USCG helicopter in the museum was about to begin, so AJ and myself hurried into the museum for the 1 hour talk about the history of the HH-52 (the USCG website has a writeup about this dedication).
Rear Adm. Gary T. Blore, Commander of the 13th Coast Guard District and current Ancient Albatross gave an excellent presentation of the helicopter, and related his own stories flying these historical life saving machines for the USCG. It held even the attention of a 9 year old body for the entire hour. If you wonder what the designation “Ancient Albatross” means, in short, it means he is the oldest active duty aviator in the USCG at this time (he’s retiring this summer, and the title will be passed to the next eldest in the fleet).
Among the stories and facts relayed. We learned;
- the HH-52 is credited with over 15,000 lives saved
- it has a boat hull that allowed them to land on water to recover survivors (a technique that is no longer used, because it was really quite dangerous)
- Adm. Blore had to ditch ad HH-52 on his first mission into the Atlantic, at night, due to bird strikes that disabled the engine and severely damaged the main rotors
- that Boston Whalers seemed be involved in an awful lot of rescues
- they had a very limited carry capacity, despite the size, due to single motor being down-rated for cost-cutting measures (re-using existing hardware for the transmissions), sometimes only being able to pull 2 survivors at a time out of the water
- off-shore navigation before off-shore LORAN and GPS was via dead-reckoning and that is quite difficult. Often they arrived back to the coast with very little fuel and far from an airfield, so they would land on the beach and call for a fuel truck
During the talk, several more helicopters arrived to the field. One of which was this US NAVY Rescure Hawk:
With the museum opening to the general public in less than 1/2 and hour, and the new arrivals to the static displays, we hustled outside to see take it all in.
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One of the first birds out was the Airlift Northwest Agusta. I see this helio a couple of times per week, landing across the street, but I still love to see these thing fly.
While talking to the pilot, I learned some interesting things about this specific helio, such as it’s complex auto-pilot allows them to fly in IRF conditions with just a single pilot. In fact, it does not even have a control stick in the left front. The only person with any controls is the pilot. And like he said, everyone on board is counting on him to be healthy during the flight.
Just like it’s arrival, the departure of the Chinook was an event in and of itself. It’s a pretty big bird and there seems to be a lot of work the flight crew has to do, just to get it up and rolling. LOL. But it’s such a great work horse, and an amazing thing to see taking flight, with it’s big counter-rotating main blades. Just another bright moment that day.
One of the last birds out, was the DEA Eurocopter. The pilot took off with a standard departure to the south, but at the end of the field, kicked the rudder hard over, banked it high and came back down low over the flight line, before completing a standard northern departure. All of those helio pilots sure seemed to love their jobs!
What a great event at the Museum of Flight. Even the bad weather did not damping the activities on the flight line.
It was fantastic to meet and learn from these American Heros. The people out there on the front lines of national defense, law enforcement and search and rescue. It really makes me Proud to be an American.
