Originally Posted by
ShyTorque
During the late 1970s, as part of my OCU course on the Puma helicopter, we did a Germany “trainer” flight. My instructor booked us into the US Army helicopter base at Heidelberg for a night stop because he had friends there. As we ground taxied in, it seemed that almost half the base personnel came out to watch us. We were very impressed with such hospitality until we discovered that most of them thought we were flying a defecting Warsaw Pact “Hip” helicopter.....
At that time, there were no Pumas based in West Germany and there is a vague resemblance, I suppose. I wouldn’t have fancied our chances in the event of the Cold War going “hot”; we’d have been shot at by both sides!
And having some Colonials laughing at our Wessex and pointing out they had them in Vietnam, I replied erm... and those? pointing at their Chinook behind them.