To: Nick Lappos
Because the helicopter was moving on the struts due to the pitching, heaving and rolling motion of the flight deck we could not tie the helicopter down to the deck. As I stated in a previous post it doesn’t take me long to check out a hot horseshoe (Learning by experience). Originally we kept the helicopters tied down until they were ready to lift off but the one time we did it and the ship was rolling and pitching and heaving we almost lost the helicopter when the pilot was forced to lift off. Luckily, I was able to release one of the tie downs and my assistant mechanic hit the cable release on the other and the pilot was able to free himself from the moving deck. He came up hard when the cable extended to its’ limits and if he tried to move up or sideways any further he would have crashed on the flight deck.