USMC rescues Merlin
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Join Date: Jul 2006
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Originally Posted by RileyDove
I think the Marines need to Google 'CH-54 Tarhe' and see what capability the U.S had in Vietnam with 380 aircraft and helicopter recoveries to their credit .
Oh, the USMC were an integral part of all that... starting with their use of the HR2S-1 (also used by the US Army as the CH-37). In case you didn't know, the US Army's CH-54 and the USMC's CH-53 both derived their transmission & rotor system from the HR2S-1/CH-37.
The USMC gained experience by recovering NASA's Mercury capsules during the early part of testing (HMR(M)-462, starting in 1958).
While this photo is of a US Army CH-37, this shows that the USMC was learning about aircraft recovery via helicopter at the same time the Army was!
And the USMC never let those skills slide, recovering large helicopters with the same model:
In December of 1972, HMH-363 rewrote the book on Tactical Aircraft Recovery when they lifted HMH-361’s CH-53A that had crashed in a mountainous area near Saddleback Mountain. In September of 1973, HMH-363 performed the same mission again when a crashed CH-53A was externally extracted from a 4,000-foot mountain-landing zone.
So don't try to belittle the USMC's expertise in this field... they know every bit as much (likely more, recently) as the US Army does about the subject!
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GreenKnight - what I said was that the U.S i.e U.S forces as a whole had the use of the CH-54 in Vietnam which as a type can out lift a CH-47 (and in many ways would be a useful type now). Nothing to do with belittling anyone!
