USMC Helicopters

Jim, here is what I know for a fact. Bell Helicopter is very close to starting the AH-1 & UH-1 rebuilds for the Marines. After the rebuilds, there will be an 80% drivetrain & rotor commonality between the two. Supposed to add another 20 years or so to the service life of the a/c.

I think that the Marines never got the Apache was because the Cobra was meeting the need of the service, & that there was no money for them to buy it anyway. Same with the H-60 vs the H-46.

A lot of the Marines future is tied in with the V-22 project, which is supposed to replace the H-46. Not sure if it supposed to replace the H-53s also.

Chris Ishmael, who was trying to get a job with Bell here in Dallas on the Huey & Cobra rebuilds, until I found out this past weekend from a Bell employee in my National Guard unit , that most of that is going to be done at their new plant in Amarillo.

Yes, the USMC still flies the UH-1 and AH-1. They're about to field the latest modes of each, the UH-1Y and AH-1Z.

I don't know why they never adopted the Apache, but I've read recently where the H-60 series couldn't carry the loads (troops, external carog, etc) that the CH-46s they were already using could.

Commanche? Not likely. The Corps is going with the "Z" model Cobra for now. Long term? Who knows. I have read reports where Marine aviation and some command officers have suggested looking at Commanche as long term alternative to the AH-1Z (they always point to using as a V-22 escort and how the Z Cobra basically won't be up to it. However those papers were from around 1998 so while interesting to read, I take them with a grain of salt. But it still isn't keeping me from building my Commanche in Marine colors!)

Of course, politics can always change anything and everything in an instant - just look at the V-22. It's had more comebacks than Aerosmith.

Maybe I'm a little cynical after 10 yrs, but the Corps usually stays with the proven system as long as possible, and then waits for the army to develop something new and then we take the older stuff off their hands and make it work for another 15-20 years. We "do more with less" all the time. I think reliability beats out high tech every time for Marines.

The only helos we have are:
AH-1W, UH-1N, CH-46E, CH-53D, CH-53E, and 1 or 2 VH-60N's (HMX-1 only).

and some V-22s

The Cobras and Hueys are being upgraded (the Z and Y variants respectively) so that they are something like 87% similar. As far as the Apache, why the heck would we want that? The skids do a better job, aren't NEARLY as maintenance intensive, and are more survivable. There's no plans to replace either with the commanche, mainly because 1) we have no need for it and 2) it doesn't fit into how we use our helicopters. To the Corps, they're a little more than flying tanks like the Army's Apaches. As of now, the V-22 is only slated to replace the Phrog. They won't get rid of the 53, as the Osprey can't do it's job and they're about to dump a lot of money into a 53 SLEP in the near future.

hope that helps

One other factor going against the AH-64 for Marines use was the narrow-track landing gear. It was found to be unsuitable for ship-board operation. A proposal was put forward to mount retracting maingear legs at the stub-wing tips, but this was shot down due to the redesign of the wing needed, the increase in weight and complexity, and the time needed to get all that done before getting the bird fielded.

As for the H-60's, the Marines were pitched the S-92 as a kind of baby-53 replacement for the H-46's, but there was no funding forthcoming. To date, the S-92 is still in development, so the Corps would have had a hell of a long wait for that bird. The new MH-60S Knighthawk would have helped with the commonality requirements for Navy/Marines operations, but at the time of the S-92 pitch, the MH-60S wasn't even being considered for the Navy.

In any case, the Corps and Bell have a long happy relationship, so why screw with success??

Besides being "logistical" a lot of it is "political". They need to keep "Bell" in business along with the rest of them.

Melgyver I agree with that. I would hate to see another wonderful part of our Aviation history go by the wayside.

Thanks for all the input and response guys. I really appreciate it.

If it ain't broke...don't fix it...just upgrade...

Don't forget that the Commanche has been canceled.

Okay! I give up! What constitutes an UH-1Y model? A buddy of mine in the LANG said they would be getting new Hueys to replace their aging UH-1V's and that the tail boom was different. Maybe a "N" model or "212 tailboom? He didn't know anything else.

Here is the new UH-1Y:



And the new AH-1Z Viper:




Both look pretty mean. All sorts of conversion possibilities.

Bell has had a program for several years that provides a refurbishment/upgrade of the basic UH-1H. Formerly known as the Huey II, it incorporates the Bell Model 212 tailboom, drive train, and rotor and a uprated T-53 engine. They've sold some into South America and recently reintroduced it as the Bell 210, with the added distinction of civil certification. They plan to compete for the latest reincarnation of the Army's requirement for a light utility helicopter - the Army program that resulted in the Comanche was to develop two variants, a stealth reconaissance helicopter and a light utility helicopter. Some in the Guard would rather have Blackhawks, of course.

Remember that Marine helos need to deploy on ships and take the salty environment. The Navy SH-60 had so many nooks and cranies it was nearly impossible to keep them from corroding away.

Whoever said politics was the reason was mostly right, though. Guess how many former Marines work for Boeing-Bell?

Thanks for all the input guys, it has been enlightning. One more question, how are helicopters that have no landing gear, but have skids instead moved around? Can anyone provide photos for me? Thanks.

"Skids" (Cobras and Hueys) can be moved around the flight deck or tarmac with wheels that are attached to the skid tubes just forward of the aft crosstube. Pretty neat to see the deck handlers work on ship with them.

Progero is on right track. all USMC Helos must be "Navalized" Corrosion is # 1 problem with Navy and USMC Helos.. Also is lack of need vs cost of upkeep and overhaul which is so much more expensive than 'Dry Helos" . The USMC aviation is a support arm of USMC. There is little $$ to support them compared to Army and Navy Helo programs.. The USMC is at the whim of their Big Brother( Navy's) check book... The USMC in the future may find Army doing much of their Helo work.. A fine example is The Army's 160th doing most of the SEAL inserts and helo support missions today. Infact almost all specops are Airforce/Army helo operations.. May be the way in the near future????

QUOTE: A fine example is The Army's 160th doing most of the SEAL inserts and helo support missions today. Infact almost all specops are Airforce/Army helo operations..

Butchy,
Don't tell the HH-60H drivers that.

Thanks for the picture of the UH-1Y. The just stuck the UH-1 airframe under an AH-1Z power pack and rotor system and tacked on the tail boom. I'm sure the "210" version is what the Army folks will wind up with!

Salbando; You are correct about the SH 60H. I have seen these birds in Bridgeport and in Norfolk.. I think the Norfolk birds were HAL 4 birds.
But as so far in Afgan and Iraq.. All Helo ops involving Dev Gru and "Line SEAL ops have been Army Helo ops.. The SH 60H is designed "Basicly" for Fleet ops.. Ship to ship & ship to shore operations etc. In Afgan the H 60 is limited in it's operation by the altitude of most operations.. That is why the Chinook is so effective.. Go Figure .. a 40 + year old airframe doing a Yeoman's job over there... Basicly the same reason the older H 34 s of the USMC were helo of choice in early days of VN.. H 34 had the best performance in higher terrains like the central highlands of VN. No protection and sooooo slooooow but good in the hills. Altitude is still a helo killer... That's another reason I'm surprised the Commanche was trashed. I heard it had excellent high altitude performance..

QUOTE: Originally posted by butchy The USMC is at the whim of their Big Brother( Navy's) check book... The USMC in the future may find Army doing much of their Helo work.. A fine example is The Army's 160th doing most of the SEAL inserts and helo support missions today. Infact almost all specops are Airforce/Army helo operations.. May be the way in the near future????

OK, we're not exactly "at the whim of [our] 'Big Brother' ". We have our own budget that is seperate from the Navy's and we're not the Navy....they just drive us around. And there is no way the Corps' helos will be replaced by Army birds. They operate in a totally different manner from us and they aren't forward deployed - two things that combine to keep them out of the loop and incapable of doing our mission.

Anyhow....the Navy currently has plans to revamp its helo usage to include more ground attack and spec-ops roles. There are still several versions of the plan floating around, but basically there are, at present, 3 types of squadrons that fly six different aircraft. They are going to 2 different a/c (SH-60S and MH-60R) and 2 types of squadrons. Some of the HCs are combining with HSs, while some of the HSLs are combining with the HSs. The HC/HS's will be going to Sierras while the HSL/HS's will be getting the Romeos. The HC/HS's will take up the duties of starboard-d, vertrep (which has been outsourced to civilian contractors to some degree), and the like, while the HSL/HS's will take on a more strike-oriented role. It still hasn't been finalized, as the Romeo is still being tested. The Sierras are out there currently in some of the HCs. Clear?

/jarhead airwinger

Butchy,
Being a USAF CSAR crewdog and having spent some time (recently) operating out of K-1 I'm fully aware of the Ops over there. Add to that my home station (Alaska) and you can see that I'm definately familiar with extreme altitudes and terrain and their effect on helo ops. Hell, we broke the altitude record for the H-60 twice conducting real world civil SAR missions. the first was up on Mt McKinley and we broke that record on Mt Wrangell St Elias. Had to dump fuel to the point we had a 15 minute window for the approach, landing, grab and dash, and then hit the tanker. By the way, we had a 2% power margine and we DID droop the rotors comin out of the site (ledge).
Now with that being said, we operated or HH-60G's in Afghanistan and had no problems with the ops. But there's no mystery as to why we're using the hell out of the Chinooks over there...That big bird carrys a big load and pulls so much torque that it's great for high altitude stuff. We even use stripped-down CH-47's up here in Alaska for high altitude stuff. They're called the HART (High Altitude Rescue Team) team Sugarbears out of Ft Wainright. But understand this, even the Army SOF guys were (and still are) using MH-60's for normal lower altitude stuff in Afghanistan. AND, early on the USN had a detachment of HH-60H's based out of ^%#&%$ (near the Paki border) conducting CSAR and SEAL infil/exfil. I've worked a few exercises out of NAS Fallon (Desert Rescue) where we used USN HH-60H's exclusively up at high altitudes and they did pretty good. The main limfac with the -60 is room inside the cabin. AT least in the Navy and USAF birds.
After working a lot with HCS-4 and HCS-5, my understanding is that they are DEDICATED CSAR and USN Special Warfare support unit. The other HS units in the Navy train for these missions and usually have two or three HH-60H's to go along with their SH-60F's, but HCS-4 & 5 are dedicated to this mission and to being forward of the beach...that's what they do....support SEALs and CSAR. In fact the HH-60H was designed SPECIFICALLY for that mission.
SOF has evolved into a "purple" mission where all branches work together in a mix. But don't discount the USN's HCS and HS units that support these and CSAR missions. I can testify that they are definately pulling their weight.
The reason why you mostly see the 160th birds or USAF AFSOC birds providing helo support to SOF is due to fact that these two organizations have the preponderance of SOF dedicated helo assets.

Salbando;
My experience is only second hand. My Son is a QMC ( E-7) SEAL attached to DEV GRU.. This is Old Team Six.. In all his ops in Afgan and Iraq ( 4 Deployments ) and his ops in Bosnia when he was a member of Team 2 .. They were "ALL" with the 160th.. I do know he has " rode Navy Choppers" but every combat operation was a 160th job.. He has nothing but praise for this unit.. I have a few photos of a certain Chinook that a "RPG" hit. The round went into Minigun's ammo boxes and did not explode.. ( Too Close for war head to arm ) .. The small arms damage to this bird was incredable.. A true testament to how tough that bird is.. After asking him, he did say they used H 60s but the Chinook carried the brunt of the missions in late 2001 and early 02.. Operations Tora Bora and Anaconda.... He also said that in higher elevations in Afganistan the H 60 was not nearly as stable a insert machine as the Chinook.. It may have been a matter of what was available.. Trying to get him to talk is like pulling teeth..

Butchy,
Pretty much agree with you, which is shown in my previous post. The one thing I wanted to make sure you and everyone else understond, is that you always use the right tool for the job at hand (hopefully anyway). Yes, as I said earlier the Chinooks have been carrying the brunt of Ops in Afghanistan, but that is mainly due to the altutudes and high terrain. As I said in my earlier post, you can't beat the ole' Chinook when it comes to high altutude performance. Now like I said, we used our HH-60Gs at some pretty damn high altitudes as well (10-14,000) but we're doing CSAR. My tour at K-1 (Kandahar) we operated out of our HH-60G's, but during an earlier deployment, we were operating out of Pave Pigs (MH-53J/M). That's what we had so that's what we used. We did a 2-week stint working with SEALs out West and they had Navy HH-60H's for air support. Now DEV GRU are special people...as you well know, they're kinda like the Delta of the Seal community. With that being said, they operate a lot with D-boys and the 160th. When I was in Somalia, we had a few DEV GRU and blue water SEALs in the mix working with the D-boys. For that matter, my career field's counterpart is the 22nd STS out of Hurlburt. We deploy often in support of 75th Rangers, SF Groups, and Delta as their Paramedic and CSAR component. That's how Wilky and Scottie Fales got involved in that long ****** day back in October 1993. I might also add that the sticks over with the 160th were the best bunch of rotorheads I ever had the pleasure to work with. A certain night formation flight that I was on with them will never leave my mind. We overlapped rotors under NVGs.
Anyway, I think we can both agree with much of what we've both said on this topic. I just want to make sure you and everyone else understood that the HS and especially the HCS (4 & 5) were very actively supporting SEAL and CSAR ops for the Navy side. They just don't have as many assets as the USAF and AR SOF does. And understand that we always try to pick the right bird for the right contingency.
Oh Yeah, My old roomate took two trips to Bosnia and that was exclusively operating out of MH-53J/M's.
Take care,

Salbando, what do you mean by "dropping the rotors" and grab and dash?"

jimz66,
A grab and dash is what we call it when we don't have much time to recover a survivor and simply grab them, and get airborne again. It's just a term most of us in the squadron us to describe the event. Sometimes you have time to upload the survivor or do a long hoist recovery. A "grab and dash" is plopping down in the LZ, grabbing them and then blasting out of the LZ. In the mission I mentioned before, we had so little fuel and the density altitude was so high (14,600ft) we only had a small window to land (sort of) grab the survivors, and then get the hell off the Ice ridge.
Drooping the main rotors. Let me set this up to help explain. So here we are trying to land on this "LZ" up at 14,600 ft to pick up these two guys whose buddies had just skied off the top of the mountain to their deaths. One hade HAPE pretty good, and the other was hypothermic. We did the computations and figured that after we dumped a bunch of gas, we would need lets say 96% power to hold a hover at that altitude. The problem was that we would only have 98% available. Let's say a downdraft dumps on you, where are you going to get the power to maintain the hover? In this particular mission, we made somewhat of a running landing on the ice ridge (which was about as long as our HH-60). On the approach we drooped the rotors. That means, the engines are giving all they can, and the rotors speed is maxed out, yet you still increase the collective imput coming in to the flare. The engines can't give you anymore power, and the rotors can't turn any faster but yet you're increasing the pitch on the main rotors....the result is drooping the rotors...the rotor speed starts to slow down and if you don't get right on it, the Helo goes down as well, since you don't have the altitude to back off the collective and increase the rotor speed. I hope that makes sense.
Anyway, we plopped down on this ice ridge and as our pilots decrease collective to settle on the ice, the right side of the Helo goes crunch and dips to one side...not good. Before this happend as we were coming in, these two yahoos start running straight for the Helo totally busting our option for a go- around. Anyway, we get them onboard, and now REALLY need to get going due to our fuel state (remember we dumped a bunch just to have the power to get into the site). The pilots try to pull her up into a hover, but at max power we could only get "skid light". So we skied forward and dumped her over the side of the ridge at about (I'm guessing) 15-20 Knots. When we cleared the edge of the ice ledge, we dumped the nose over to gain airspeed and we actually oversped the rotors on the way down.
Hope that I didn't complicate things further, and that you understand the terms.

A friend (a Marine)flew UH-IN'S on a Med tour in the 80's. What color would they have been?

Either green overall or three tone green/gray/black. It depends on when he was there. Check out http://www.jpsmodell.de/dc/shemes/usmc85_e.htm and http://www.jpsmodell.de/dc/shemes/usmc85a_e.htm

I don't know exactly when the 3-tone land scheme came into service, but it was carried by all types up to Desert Storm - I think it was around then when overall gray schemes started appearing in large numbers. Hopefully someone reading this will have first hand knowlege and either confirm or correct this.