To: Nick I believe that you might be a bit wrong on what the oleos do and can’t do. If the oleos are not correctly inflated they can set up a resonant system that will allow the helicopter to move on the oleos and if during start up the three bladed system will be out of balance until it comes up to speed and centrifugal forces build up. This same situation can exist with properly inflated struts coupled with an external excitation source. A similar situation can develop if a damper is out of tune and this could result in ground resonance or even air resonance. The case I was describing the helicopter was aligned with the lateral axis of the ship. Because the ship was an icebreaker it would be rolling excessively to the left and then to the right. If it were actually be breaking the ice while rolling, the ship would also have an excitation from the bow to the stern. This combined rolling and pitching motion would cause the helicopter to rock on the struts. As the rotor system built up speed the blades would be displaced in such a way as to cause a severe imbalance. Because of the very high CG of the helicopter the rocking and pitching motion and the rocking on the struts would couple up with the imbalance of the rotor system. Another problem was that the dampers had cold soaked over night and their timing was off a bit. This problem would solve itself as soon as leading and lagging would take place but until that time the blades may not be in the same place due to the inertial loads created during startup. During this period the pilots would have to be prepared to lift off as soon as the rotors came up to speed or, sure as hell there would be a very major problem on the flight deck.
We had a similar problem with the float mounted Bell. When the helicopter was being started the flight mechanic would have to hold the blade tip in his fingertips in order to keep the blades at there mid point of teeter. The same rocking and rolling motion would apply to this helicopter on floats as it would rock back and forth and at the same time, it was bouncing on the floats. If this wasn’t done and the blades were free to teeter during start up the blade disc would whip so fast and so hard as to tip the helicopter over