ALWAYS READY ROTARY WING,Coast Guard helicopters evolved from struggling experiments to powerful lifesavers and continue to acquire new capabilities for broader missions.

ALWAYS READY ROTARY WING

BY FRANK COLUCCI

When Hurricane Michael smashed the Florida Gulf Coast last October, Coast Guard helicopters pre-positioned from air stations as far away as Detroit and Traverse City, Michigan, helped save 63 lives. When Hurricane Florence flooded the Carolinas in September, MH-60T Jayhawks and MH-65D Dolphins saved 199 storm victims and assisted 100 more. The Coast Guard now has 45 MH-60Ts and 98 MH-65s, and today’s helicopters do a lot more than search and rescue (SAR).

Dolphins from the National Capitol Region Air Defense Facility routinely enforce the special flight rules area protecting the White House. Last spring, a Jayhawk from Coast Guard Air Station (AirSta) San Diego, California, placed a new light off Seal Beach, California, one task in helicopter support for maritime navigation aids. In 2017, Dolphins from the Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) homebased at Jacksonville, Florida, scored their 500th drug bust when they intercepted a go-fast smuggling boat in the Eastern Pacific. Later that year, Jayhawks from Coast Guard AirSta Miami airlifted food and water around Puerto Rico to survivors of Hurricane Maria.

The Coast Guard has about 600 helicopter pilots who train at their home stations and return to the Aviation Training Center in Mobile, Alabama, for annual standardization. Cmdr. Michael Brimblecom in the Office of Aviation Forces noted, “The Coast Guard has seen a large growth in mission sets to include national defense, air intercept, and airborne use of force, to go along with its more traditional role of search and rescue and law enforcement missions. Our missions have evolved as the nation’s interests and global threats have evolved.”

EARLY EXPERIMENTS

Coast Guard capabilities have also evolved in parallel with helicopter technology. On April 20, 1942, the chief of the Aviation Engineering Division, Cmdr. William Kossler, and the commanding officer of AirSta Brooklyn, New York, Cmdr. Watson Burton, watched the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 fly at Bridgeport, Connecticut.

A Coast Guard Sikorsky HNS-1 in a hover with a patient in a Stokes litter on the starboard side. It has inflatable pontoons mounted for water landings. The HNS-1 at Coast Guard Air Station Brooklyn was used to develop rescue hoists in 1944.

Controlled helicopter flight with side-by-side rotors was demonstrated in prewar Germany, but Igor Sikorsky’s experimental VS-300 made dominant the more compact single main rotor layout with anti-torque tail rotor. The VS-300 refined helicopter handling qualities and made vertical lift an option for wartime missions.

Coast Guard HNS-1s conducting hoisting operations in Jamaica Bay, New York. The HNS-1 was the Coast Guard’s first helicopter, with more than 10 procured.

While Burton advocated the helicopter as an air-sea rescue platform and alternative to harbor patrol blimps, Lt. Cmdr. Frank Erickson proposed helicopters flying from Atlantic convoy ships with dipping sonar and radar to counter German submarine attacks, according to the April 2018 Sikorsky Archives News. Kossler served on an interagency board for joint Army-Navy/Coast Guard helicopter buys and noted Sikorsky’s 2,500-pound S-47/R-4 in production for the Army could carry two crewmembers, a depth charge, and four hours of fuel for antisubmarine warfare (ASW). Coast Guard Commandant Vice Adm. Russell Waesche approved the idea, but contracts kept the Coast Guard from taking the early Army helicopters. After meeting with Waesche in February 1943, Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King directed the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics to test helicopters on merchant ships. Waesche meanwhile ordered Kossler to create a training program for helicopter pilots and maintainers and plan for supporting air stations.

Erickson trained at the Sikorsky plant to become the first Coast Guard helicopter pilot, and he accepted the first Navy HNS-1 (equivalent to the production Army R-4) in October 1943. In November 1943, AirSta Brooklyn at Floyd Bennett Field became the joint-service helicopter training base under Erickson, with three HNS-1s on hand to train U.S. Army, Navy, and Coast Guard pilots and pilots of the British Helicopter Service Trials Unit.

While working at the Connecticut helicopter factory, Sikorsky’s son, Sergei, attained draft age and joined the Coast Guard in 1943. He was assigned to Floyd Bennett Field late that year as a Seaman 2nd Class helicopter mechanic. Sergei Sikorsky recalled, “I remember Cmdr. Erickson, USCG, with respect and admiration. He saw the role that the helicopter would play as the ‘flying lifeboat’ for the Coast Guard. It was Erickson who began developing the helicopter rescue hoist, the rescue basket, now called the Erickson Basket, and much more.” Sikorsky added, “His vision of the helicopter did not sit well with Coast Guard Headquarters, where the focus was on the fixed-wing flying boats. He was the Coast Guard’s Billy Mitchell.”

On Jan. 3, 1944, Erickson dramatically demonstrated the value of the helicopter when the destroyer USS Turner blew up in Ambrose Channel off Sandy Hook, New Jersey. The Coast Guard pilot flew an HNS-1 from South Ferry, Manhattan, through rain, sleet, and snow to deliver two cases of blood plasma to a New Jersey shore hospital in just 14 minutes. Surface transport would have taken hours.

Here, an HOS-1 Hoverfly II flies over Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, Dec. 17, 1947. The service operated 27 HOS-1 helicopters between 1945 and 1949.

Open-sea trials by British and American pilots in early 1943 showed flying YR-4Bs from merchant ships was hazardous. In January 1944, Coast Guard helicopter pilot No. 2, Lt. j.g. Stewart Graham, made the first flight from the deck of a merchant ship in convoy in the North Atlantic, but with the early helicopters judged unsuitable for ASW, development focused on rescue.

In early 1944, an Army YR-4B in Burma recovered four airplane crash survivors with four landings in Japanesecontested territory. According to Sergei Sikorsky, “While reading the mission report, Erickson realized that a hoist-equipped helicopter could have lifted the survivors to safety far more quickly, and the concept of the helicopter rescue hoist was born.” Igor Sikorsky himself visited AirSta Brooklyn in August 1944 and rode the rescue hoist a few feet in the air under Erickson’s hovering helicopter. “By October 1944, we were hoisting Stokes litters.”

SAVING LIVES, SCOUTING ICE

The end of World War II closed the Brooklyn helicopter schoolhouse. In February 1946, Graham became the project officer for the Naval Research Laboratory helicopter dipping sonar program, but the Coast Guard Rotary Wing Development Project Unit at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, continued rescue work. On Sept. 22-23, 1946, Coast Guard pilots Cmdr. Frank Erickson, Lt. “Stew” Graham, Lt. Gus Kleisch, and Lt. Walt Bolton were airlifted by Army C-54 to Newfoundland with an HNS-1 helicopter to evacuate survivors of an airliner crash 20 miles from Gander. They were joined by a new HOS-1 (the Sikorsky S-49/R-6) from AirSta Brooklyn. The two helicopters flying from makeshift helipads saved 18 injured passengers.

The HO3S-1G (S-51) was used for rescue helicopter development at Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Between 1946 and 1954, the Coast Guard flew nine Sikorsky HO2/3S-1G helicopters. The Navy version was immortalized in the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri.

The Coast Guard subsequently ordered nine Sikorsky S-51s (HO3S-1Gs) delivered from 1946 to 1950. The 5,500-pound helicopter with a 450-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr. engine could seat a pilot and three passengers. In March 1949, Erickson was the chief helicopter development engineer at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and flew one of the aircraft for an hour hands off with stabilizing airfoils under the main rotor. Elizabeth City also tested inflatable helicopter floats for emergency water landings. Meanwhile, Coast Guard helicopters continued to respond to real emergencies. In February 1950, Lt. Fletcher Brown flew an HO3S-1G from Elizabeth City to Arkansas to transport doctors and nurses to families cut off by St. Francis River flooding.

In addition to the early Sikorsky aircraft, the Coast Guard acquired Bell Model 47 training and utility helicopters for varied missions. The first two-seat HTL-1 taken from the Navy in 1947 surveyed and patrolled New York Harbor. An HTL-4 with floats flew ice reconnaissance from the Coast Guard Cutter Storis off Nome, Alaska. Three HTL-5s received in 1952 likewise scouted passages through arctic ice, and flew personnel and cargo from ship to shore over ice blockages. One was lost in a fatal accident from the icebreaker Northwind in 1954.

Two four-place HUL-1Gs were transferred from the Navy in 1959, and flew ice reconnaissance from the Northwind, and later SAR and utility missions from the Storis in the Bering Sea. On April 12 and 13, 1961, Cmdr. Chester Richmond used one of the helicopters to fly a doctor and emergency medical supplies 43 miles over water in total darkness and hazardous weather from St. Paul Island, Alaska, to St. George Island to treat two critically burned people. He returned the doctor and patients to St. Paul Island at first light. Two more floatequipped HTL-7s loaned to the Coast Guard by the Navy in 1962 remained in service until 1968.

MORE POWERFUL PISTONS

Small, light helicopters initially operated by theCoast Guard were limited in performance and payload.When the U.S. Air Force sent prototype Sikorsky S-55s to Korea in March 1951, it launched a series of more capable 10-seat helicopters adopted by all the U.S. armed services – Air Force and Army H-19s, Marine Corps HRS, and Navy and Coast Guard HO4S aircraft. The Coast Guard received the first of seven HO4S-2Gs with 550-horsepower Wright radial engines in November 1951. On Jan. 19, 1952, Lt. Cmdr. Gordon MacLane flew a new HO4S-2 from AirSta Port Angeles, Washington, to rescue five survivors of an Air Force SB-17 SAR aircraft from a 5,000-foot-high crash site on Tyler Peak in Washington state. Starting in January 1952, 23 follow-on HO4S-3G helicopters introduced 700-horsepower engines and night/instrument flight rule capability. Then-Cmdr. Stew Graham flew the first recorded night hoist rescue in the Gulf of Mexico in January 1955. Another eight Marine HRS-3s were transferred to the Coast Guard.

Nine of the more powerful, more capable Sikorsky HUS-1G (aka HH-34 Seahorse) helicopters, which introduced hands-off night hover capability, flew for the Coast Guard between 1959 and 1963. While able to carry more load greater distances, helicopters to this point had been dependent upon heavy and sometimes unreliable piston engines for power.

Coast Guard rescue still relied on fixed-wing amphibians. However, an HO4S-3G reshaped public helicopter perceptions and Coast Guard aviation plans when a broken levee on the Feather River flooded Yuba City, California, on Dec. 23, 1955. The single helicopter from AirSta San Francisco hoisted 138 flood victims to safety in 29 continuous operating hours. The first 58 rescues were at night, and Lt. Henry Pfeiffer maneuvered his aircraft among trees, power and telephone lines, and TV antennas to hoist people from flooded homes and deliver them to high ground. Lt. Cmdr. George Thometz relieved Pfeiffer at the controls and continued rescues without shutting the aircraft down. On one sortie, he rescued 14 adults and children from a roof while hovering close to a dangerous obstruction. Nationwide media coverage helped make the helicopter the dominant rescue platform of Coast Guard aviation.

The Coast Guard HO4S (later designated the HH-19G) was based on the Navy’s first operational ASW helicopter. The Navy’s wish for a longerendurance hunter/killer able to carry sonar and weapons simultaneously led to the 14,000-pound Sikorsky S-58 (Navy HSS-1) with a 1,525-horsepower Wright radial engine and automatic hover capability. The Coast Guard aviation plan of 1957 specified 79 medium-range helicopters capable of rescuing six survivors 300 nautical miles offshore, and the service ordered six S-58/HUS-1G helicopters in 1959. In 1960, Lt. Cmdr. James Sigman flew one from AirSta New Orleans into Hurricane Ethel to search for a lost fishing vessel.

Though the HUS-1G (later redesignated HH-34F) was a more capable, more sophisticated aircraft than the HO4S-1, two of the big piston engine helicopterscrashed into Tampa Bay during a single rescue in September 1960. Another was lost in November 1962 in the Gulf of Mexico. The remaining HH-34Fs were relinquished soon after, and the Coast Guard looked to a new generation of amphibious, turbine-powered helicopters.

TURBINE TRANSITION

Despite its substantial size and installed power, the HUS-1G was limited by its heavy reciprocating engine, especially at high ambient temperatures. Turboshaft engines promised more power in a far lighter package with greater reliability. Sikorsky flew twin General Electric T58 turboshafts on an HSS-1F test helicopter in February 1957. Later that same year, the company announced development of the 8,300-pound S-62 with a single T58 de-rated to 730 shaft horse power, HO4S dynamics, 10-passenger cabin, and a boat hull for water landings. The commercial S-62 became the Coast Guard HU2S-1G or HH-52A Seaguard, with hydraulic rescue hoist and fold-out platform for water rescues. The HH-52A stability augmentation system also provided a beep-to-a-hover function that brought the helicopter to a stable hover over water at night. The HH-52A first flew in 1958 and passed a Coast Guard-directed test program at the Naval Air Test Center at Patuxent River, Maryland. The first operational delivery was made to AirSta Salem, Massachusetts, in December 1962. The last of 99 HH-52As was delivered in 1969. During their time on alert, HH-52As were credited with more than 15,000 “saves.”

On the night of Dec. 21, 1968, Lt. Cmdr. George Garbe flew an HH-52A to rescue five sailors from a fishing vessel grounded and breaking up off Marmot Island, Alaska. Unable to climb higher because of freezing conditions, Garbe proceeded in darkness through heavy snow showers and fog. He executed a beep-to-a-hover approach, turned off aircraft lights to eliminate reflections from sea spray and snow, and landed in the water about a mile from the vessel. With searchlight back on, Garbe taxied the helicopter toward the vessel until rocks appeared. He lifted again to air-taxi over the ship and held the HH-52A over the stern while staying clear of surrounding terrain and ship’s rigging. He returned five times to rescue the crew.

HH-52s served the Coast Guard well from 1963 to 1986, but they were limited to a rescue radius of about 150 nautical miles and on hot days could typically carry only three survivors and crew. The Coast Guard wanted a mediumrange recovery (MRR) helicopter to fly 300 nautical miles, loiter 30 minutes, and return with six survivors plus crew. The twin-turbine, long-body Sikorsky S-61R amphibian in production for the Air Force won the MRR competition. It was the HH-3E Jolly Green Giant combat SAR helicopter of the Air Force in Southeast Asia. Significantly, three Coast Guard aviators flew with Air Force rescue squadrons in Vietnam. Lt. Jack Rittichier was lost on June 9, 1968, trying to rescue a downed Marine pilot and was awarded the Silver Star posthumously.

The Coast Guard HH-3F first flew on Oct. 11, 1967, and 40 “Pelicans” were delivered from December 1968 to June 1972. (In 1990, the Coast Guard bolstered the fleet with a mix of nine Air Force HH-3Es and CH-3Es.) The HH-3F first implementation station was AirSta New Orleans. At around 19,000-pounds normal mission weight, the HH-3F with 4,000-pound normal fuel had 3 to 3.5 hours endurance plus reserves. Maximum gross weight with up to 6,000-pounds of internal auxiliary fuel was 22,050 pounds.

On March 1, 1977, Lt. James Stiles rescued four crewmen from a fishing vessel sinking off Cape Sarichef, Alaska. From AirSta Kodiak, his HH-3F flew 475 miles under ceilings as low as 100 feet with half-mile visibility in heavy snow showers, icing, and winds gusting to 70 knots. On scene, Stiles hovered over the vessel while his crew hoisted the four sailors aboard to return in treacherous weather. Less than two years later, Stiles and two of his crew were lost attempting to rescue an injured sailor from a Japanese fishing vessel 200 nautical miles from AirSta Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

On March 15, 1991, Lt. Laura Guth and crew flew anHH-3F 600 nautical miles across the Alaska peninsula and open water to rescue eight sailors from the icetrapped Alaskan Monarch in the Bering Sea near St. Paul, Alaska. Before commercial helicopter emergency medical services were widespread, long-range HH-3Fs were called upon for MAST – Military Assistance to Safety and Traffic – missions, flying emergency cases with medical teams to hospitals. The HH-3F supported aids to navigation – carrying work crews and equipment to automated lighthouses, beacons, and buoys. The big helicopter occasionally hauled the 4,200-pound ADAPTS – the Air Deployable Antipollution Transfer System – to pump out tankers grounded.

Though the Coast Guard started deploying HH-52As on surface vessels in 1973 for drug interdiction, HH-3F structures were never stressed for shipboard operations. However, in the 1980s, the big HH-3F carried drug enforcement agents for OPBAT – Operations Bahamas Turks and Caicos. Coast Guard crews flying from forward operating locations also inserted, extracted, and supplied enforcement teams in Central America. The Coast Guard gave helicopter crews night vision goggles in the late 1980s and equipped some HH-3Fs with thermal imagers. The size of the HH-3F made it a preferred aircraft for drug interdiction teams, and AirSta Clearwater, Florida, close to the action, was the last air station to retire the helicopters in May 1994.

DOLPHINS AND JAYHAWKS

The Coast Guard began the search for a short-range recovery (SRR) helicopter to replace the HH-52A in 1974. Source selection authorities wanted a production twinturbine helicopter with a 150-nautical-mile radius and able to carry three survivors and three crewmembers. The French Aerospatiale SA-365 Dauphin was adapted to Coast Guard requirements with U.S.-made Lycoming LTS101 engines and Rockwell Collins avionics, including a coupled autopilot that could bring the helicopter to a hands-off hover over a pre-set point. The Coast Guard accepted the first of 96 HH-65A (SA-366G) Dolphins on Nov. 14, 1984.

A crewmember maintains tension on a tagline attached to a rescue basket during hoist training with an MH-65 Dolphin aircrew, Oct. 3, 2018. The Coast Guard’s short-range recovery helicopter since 1984 has been the H-65 Dolphin. Nearly 100 have been upgraded through several versions, with the latest upgrade underway to MH-65E standard.

On the night of March 14, 1988, Lt. Cmdr. Gary Gamble took an HH-65A from AirSta Savannah, Georgia, in search of a fishing boat in danger of sinking 65 miles east of Georgetown, South Carolina. He arrived to find the vessel tossed in 40-knot winds and 15-foot seas. The helicopter crew lowered a trail line to the stern and first delivered two dewatering pumps. With the boat still sinking, Gamble quickly maneuvered his helicopter to hoist the crew of five aboard. One sailor missed the rescue basket, and the helicopter pilot took direction from the rescue crewman to scoop the sailor out of the water. With fuel low, the Dolphin quickly recovered the other four sailors and returned to land.

The Coast Guard SRR helicopter mission has broadened and the Dolphin has changed since American Eurocopter (now Airbus Helicopters) delivered the HH-65A. The Elizabeth City Aircraft Repair and Supply Center (today’s Aviation Logistics Center or ALC) upgraded the HH-65A to HH-65B standards with new navigators and multifunction displays in 2001. Threats to homeland security gave the helicopter heavy guns and armor for Airborne Use of Force (AUF) missions. The HH-65C delivered in 2004 replaced twin Lycoming/Honeywell turboshafts with Turbomeca Arriel engines for 40 percent more power and upped maximum takeoff weight from 8,900 pounds to 9,480 pounds. The first Coast Guard rescue after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans in 2005 was made by a Dolphin operating in 60-knot winds. The Coast Guard assumed the Washington, D.C., air defense mission in 2006 and ordered six new HH-65Cs to supplement Dolphin conversions.

The Coast Guard leased both the MD Helicopters MD900 and Agusta 109E (MH-90 Enforcer and MH-68 Stingray) for the counterdrug and counterterrorism Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) commissioned in 2000. HITRON ultimately received armed MH-65C Dolphins in 2008 and, today, has 10 MH-65Ds for ship- and shore-based missions. The Coast Guard now has 86 MH-65Ds in service, 10 more in programmed depot maintenance (PDM), and two upgraded to MH-65Es with the Common Avionics Architecture System in the MH-60T Jayhawk. Conversion of the entire fleet to MH-65E standards will begin in fiscal year 2020.

An MH-60 Jayhawk painted in vintage Coast Guard yellow lowers a rescue basket during training off Washington state in July 2018. The service has 38 MH-60T models in service and seven in programmed depot maintenance today. The most recent MH-60T update gave the Jayhawk digital avionics and night vision electro-optics.

The Coast Guard MRR Jayhawk is based on the Sikorsky S-70 Black Hawk and Seahawk helicopters of the U.S. Army and Navy. Coast Guard plans for an MRR helicopter to replace the HH-3F coincided with a Navy requirement for a new strike rescue and special warfare support helicopter based on the subhunting SH-60F. Simultaneous development and production of the Navy HH-60H and Coast Guard MRR promised savings. Coast Guard officials signed the contract Sept. 29, 1986, and the first HH-60J Jayhawk with weather radar and other Coast Guard equipment was delivered in March 1990.

With external fuel, the 22,000-pound Jayhawk has up to 7 hours endurance. On the night of Oct. 28, 1991, an Elizabeth City HH-60J aircrew commanded by Lt. Paul Lange flew into Hurricane Grace responding to a distress call from the sailing vessel Anne Kristina about 300 nautical miles east of Cape Henry, Virginia. The Jayhawk crew refueled on the aircraft carrier USS America conducting sea trials 100 nautical miles offshore and arrived on the rescue scene to execute an automatic precision approach-to-coupled hover. They located the sinking schooner with night vision goggles, dropped a rescue swimmer into 40-foot seas, and hovered in 60-knot winds and driving rain to hoist nine sailors from the Atlantic. The Jayhawk returned to USS America with 13 people aboard.

Sikorsky delivered the last of 42 new HH-60Js to the Coast Guard in 1996. In PDM, Jayhawks acquired night visionics, health and usage monitoring systems, and other improvements. Aging airframes, obsolescent avionics, and the armed AUF mission after 9/11 led the ALC at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, to rebuild the HH-60J fleet to MH-60T standards with digital “glass” cockpits and the Common Avionics Architecture System.

On Oct. 29, 2012, during Superstorm Sandy, an MH-60T piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Steven Cerveny rescued sailors from the sinking HMS Bounty replica. The aircrew flew in darkness, 60-knot winds, and driving rain to execute an instrument descent to the debris field of the ship. The rescue swimmer was deployed in galeforce winds and 30-foot seas to hoist one survivor.The helicopter crew found the remaining survivors intwo life rafts and rescued four more sailors. Forcedto withdraw with low fuel, they positioned anotherJayhawk to recover the remaining nine survivors.

The Coast Guard completed MH-60T upgrades inAugust 2016 and now has 38 Tango models in serviceand seven in PDM. In addition to extending the servicelife of the MH-60, the Coast Guard plans to acquire upto 60 Navy SH-60Fs for Tango-model conversions. Boththe MH-60T and MH-65E are expected in service until themid-2030s, and according to Brimblecom, “As these aircraftonly continue to get older, we are constantly lookingat ways to extend them as long as we can to get asmuch as we can out of them.” He added, “Our currentfleet of helicopters is being upgraded and given a servicelife extension to extend them as long as we can asthe military studies and looks into the next generationof helicopters. Future vertical lift is a joint program withall the services that will hopefully define the next era ofvertical-lift flight.”