S-67 Blackhawk's visit to the U.K,1974

[brewerybod]

I am researching the S-67's movements in the U.K before its ill fated Farnborough airshow appearance on the 1st of September,1974.
In an old copy of Aviation News it says it was shipped to the U.K on the 16th of August and i have seen a photo of it taken at Gatwick on the 24th of August (was it airfreighted in to Gatwick and assembled there ?)

I know i saw it flying over my home in Suffolk on the 25th and 26th of August as i believe it went to RAF Woodbridge in Suffolk and also spent some time operating out of Beccles Heliport also in Suffolk (i live about five miles away).
If anyone has any info or even better photographs of it at either Woodbridge or Beccles i would be very interested as i am hoping to make a small display about it in the 'Woodbridge' room at the Bentwaters Cold War Museum.

In the 1975 RAF Woodbridge community day programme they had a photo of the S-67 and it very much looks like it was taken on Woodbridge but i'm not 100% sure (see below)
http://i725.photobucket.com/albums/ww255/rafbentwaters/S-67BLACKHAWK.jpg

Cheers - Graham,
Bentwaters Cold War Museum

[chevvron]

Regretfully I had a grandstand view of its demise from an office in the Farnborough Control Tower where I had been tasked to produce the next day's flying programme. It was pretty obvious to all those watching that it had commenced a manoeuvre from which it could not safely recover.
I can't recall when it arrived at Farnborough but it would have had to validate its display, so it would have been between 26 and 30 Aug.

[skytrain10]

Graham
I saw the S-67, N671SA, on approach to Gatwick on the 24th. Whether it was already there and I just happened to see it doing an ILS run I can't say for sure, but I believe this was reported as its first visit in the aviation magazines of the time.
Afraid I cant help on where it was assembled.
Hope this is of some help
Cheers
Ken

[brewerybod]

Thanks for your reply Ken,
I remember as a twelve year old i was helping my mates father who was a cow man feed the cows on the 25th August,1974 when i heard the sound of a helicopter approaching,so as you do i dashed out of the cow shed and looked up and saw the S-67 Blackhawk wizz over my head.
An amazing looking machine,it was only later i heard it was at RAF Woodbridge for a while and had visited Beccles heliport with a HH-53 Super Jolly Green Giant in support.

Cheers - Graham

[chevvron]

A CH53 was doing a co-ordinated display with the S67 when the '67 met its end. The '53 landed straight away, but I think it did a solo display on other days.
The two together could have been 'working up' their display routine prior to performing in front of the Flying Control Committee (who validate ALL displays including Red Arrows) at Farnborough.

[treadigraph]

Have you seen this? Accident report (http://www.aaib.gov.uk/publications/formal_reports/1_1976__n671sa.cfm)... Includes some detail of Woodbridge visit.

[chevvron]

I can only too well remember the increased blade 'slap' as he obviously applied extra collective to arrest rate of descent; I said 'he's going in' and one of the other guys in the office also said it in unison; as it struck the ground banked slightly away from the tower, the fire broke out and rapidly covered the airframe - I had expected the aircraft to just maybe break up as I'd never seen a fire of such intensity break out so rapidly.
It ended up in almost the same place as the Meteor T7 which crashed about a year later.

[brewerybod]

Thanks for the link treadigraph....i had not seen that before.

[Nige321]

It's poor quality, but this appears to be Sikorsky's marketing video for the S-67...

Vgs5npH_XUo

[sycamore]

B-B ,I`ve sent a PM to Nick Lappos to request some further information and clarification on the Blackhawk`s handling aspects,vis the AAIB Report.He responded that he will dig out information,and suggested a wider audience on the Forum,so I hope that will appeal to you all.
Ref the desert paint scheme,I had a photo some time ago when it was in `black/dark blue ?...looked really the biz,if anyone has seen it...

[NickLappos]

Sycamore was kind enough to reach out to me let me see if I can shed some light:

I was a junior test pilot in the Sikorsky pilot's office at the time that the S 67 was being prepared for the trip to Farnborough. This was a great opportunity to fly with its chief pilot, Kurt Cannon, several times, including some valuable instruction in its aerobatic routine. The S-67 was marvelous to fly, very smooth and stable with relatively crisp handling, extremely fast and quite adequate in aerobatic maneuvers. Kurt had I flew many rolls and split S maneuvers and one or two loops. The S 67 had just completed an experimental program where it flew a fan in fin design. The aircraft was black during this test program. The fan in fin tail was removed and the conventional tail reinstalled in a period of about 20 days ending in late August. During the refit, the aircraft was painted in a desert camouflage paint job because it was scheduled to conduct flight demonstrations after Farnborough in the mid east.

Kurt Cannon and Stu Craig were the two pilots at Farnborough, both were friends. I believe that the very poor visibility on the day of the accident had a great deal to do with the crash. Reports indicate that there was no discernible horizon, making precise attitude control more difficult. The aircraft conducted a barrel roll with too much pitch attitude excursion, so that it consumed too much vertical airspace in its conical flight path. Kurt realize this and hastened the roll after the 180 point but the rated descent was too much, so that the aircraft fundamentally settled in at a level attitude, broke up on impact and burned. Stu was killed at impact, Kurt apparently had damaged his lungs with the hot gases from the fire and could not be saved, he died nine days later. As a note his son is also Kurt Cannon and is a helicopter aficionado, he works in the medical industry and I keep in touch with him.

The rolls the S-67 conducted were only to the right, because of a little-known facet of helicopter maneuvering where that the tail rotor bending moments through the shaft and the blades are higher with rolls to the left than to the right. This is because the precessional forces (due to the roll rate on a spinning rotor) and dissymmetry of lift forces (due to the advancing/retreating action of the rotor in the free stream) sum positively to the left, and subtract to the right (on US helicopters where the main rotor turns counter-clockwise when viewed from above.) This is published in a paper I co-authored where the advantages of the fenestron in roll maneuvers became apparent, where both presession and dissymmetry are not factors with the shrouded fan.

As an aside, the PR film reproduced below was made a week before the aircraft left for Farnborough, in the sand dunes at Cape Cod, Massachusetts. I flew the chase helicopter that carried the cameraman, Joe Summers, a very skilled motion picture cameraman.

[brewerybod]

Have now positively identified the airfield (see photo at start of thread) as RAF Woodbridge,the area where the S-67 is parked was re-developed in the late seventies hence the delay in identifying it as Woodbridge.

Thanks to Erroll of the Bentwaters Cold War Museum for the detective work :)

[sycamore]

Thanks Nick for your info; would you have a picture of it in `black` at all that you can post ? Thnks ,Syc..

[brewerybod]

If you put 'S-67 blackhawk' into Google image search it comes up with some photos of it in the black scheme.