HELICOPTERS

HELICOPTERS. Few inventions have changed transportation and military aviation as rapidly and dramatically as the helicopter. The quest for powered flight assumed two forms—horizontal takeoff and vertical take-off—and helicopters and their cousins autogiros, emerged as solutions to the problem of vertical flight. Researchers who pursued vertical flight options sought to capitalize on the increased battlefield surveillance and reconnaissance potential that such craft could provide. Additionally, helicopters promised to offer an inexpensive method of maintaining liaison between central command centers and subordinate units. Experiments with autogiro and helicopter designs occurred throughout Europe, Russia, and the United States from the early 1900s through the interwar years. In 1939, Igor Sikorsky successfully tested his VS 300, the first helicopter with a main rotor that provided lift and a tail rotor that provided directional stability. Sikorsky's solution to the problems of simultaneously lifting and controlling the aircraft launched the helicopter industry in the United States.

Although U.S. forces gained some experience with helicopters late in World War II, the first substantial use of the vertical-takeoff craft came in the Korean War. Between 1950 and 1953, helicopters proved their worth in casualty evacuation, search and rescue, troop insertion, cargo transport, and reconnaissance. In 1950, General Douglas MacArthur requested an increase in the number of helicopters for use as organic aircraft within division, corps, and army headquarters units. U.S. Marine Corps units also used helicopters as organic airlift and combat support assets to bolster tactical combat effectiveness. Perhaps the greatest contribution helicopters made to the war effort in Korea came in the form of aeromedical evacuation. Countless numbers of wounded soldiers owed their survival to dedicated helicopter crews who carried them to field hospitals for emergency medical care. By the end of the Korean War, the U.S. military was committed to developing the helicopter's potential for nearly every conceivable mission.

After the war, helicopter designers concentrated on developing powerful craft that could carry greater payloads over longer distances. Certain industries—oil exploration, for example—came to depend on the economical transportation ability inherent in helicopter technology. The military concentrated on making helicopters an integral

maneuver element of land warfare. The French use of helicopters to patrol and pacify large territories in the Algerian War foreshadowed the U.S. Army's airmobile concepts that came to typify the Vietnam War between 1964 and 1973. Moreover, U.S. army doctrine contained an implicit comparison between lightly armed, mobile guerrilla forces and the mobility that conventional forces obtained using heliborne troops. With this in mind, the army created air cavalry divisions with an assortment of assault, attack, heavy and medium transport, command and control, search and rescue, and medical evacuation helicopters.

The vision of helicopters as organic aviation assets in nearly every army echelon characterized U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Army leaders attempted to use helicopters to achieve "vertical envelopments" of Vietcong and North Vietnamese regular forces. According to this concept, ground reconnaissance missions would locate and fix enemy forces until air cavalry units arrived to launch the main American assault. The strategy first emerged in the dramatic Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in 1965, involving the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) in which U.S. forces engaged and defeated two North Vietnamese army regiments in South Vietnam's central highlands.

Heroic search and rescue crews penetrated heavily defended Vietcong and North Vietnamese positions throughout the war to pluck downed aircrews and wounded soldiers from certain imprisonment or death. Fittingly, the last images of U.S. involvement in Vietnam included helicopters evacuating embassy personnel and refugees from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) as the South Vietnamese government collapsed in March 1975. In the post-Vietnam era, the U.S. military continued to develop robust helicopter forces. The U.S. Navy in the twenty-first century continued to rely on a wide range of helicopters to support fleet operations in such roles as antisubmarine warfare, troop insertion, countermine operations, search and rescue, and cargo movement. U.S. Air Force special operations units relied on the high-tech Sikorsky MH-53 J/M aircraft, and the U.S. Army developed the Boeing AH Apache Longbow to dominate the combined arms battlefield.

Civilian use of helicopters exploded after the Vietnam War. The same characteristics—speed, mobility, and vertical takeoff and landing—that made helicopters attractive to military forces also appealed to police, emergency services, and firefighting institutions. Law enforcement helicopters from federal to local levels assisted ground units in surveillance and pursuit operations. Emergency service helicopters supported myriad tasks that produced dramatic lifesaving results. Helicopters enhanced firefighting efforts whether in large-scale wildfires or in combating hazardous industrial fires.

HELICOPTERS

BIBLIOGRAPHY