Helicopters ring out ‘Sound of Freedom’
Nov. 9, 2007
At the Army Aviation Support Facility #1 in West Bend, servicemen have warm memories for a retiring utility vehicle with a distinct personality and history of service spanning more than half a century.
The military is cycling Huey helicopters out of use, and the West Bend facility will probably begin receiving their replacement, Black Hawk helicopters, sometime next year.
Hueys’ first appeared early in the Korean War and offered an improvement over their predecessor because they could carry three patients on stretches and as many as six passengers total.
Its initial design as a HU-1 (“HU” standings for “helicopter utility”) lead to its nickname. Now known officially as the UH-1 Iroquois, it had a stronger engine and could move more quickly and hover longer.
“It could fly faster, it could carry more weight and it could get the patients tot he hospital more quickly,” said Maj. Matthew Strub, the commander of Wisconsin Army National Guard’s 832nd Medical Company, based at the facility.
Transporting more patients faster helped reduce to the mortality rate for wounded soldiers kept the mortality rate of wounded soldiers in the Korean War the lowest of any war in history. Hueys were upgraded through the Vietnam War and up until the early 1970s, when they reached their current incarnation, Strub said.
As the military phases out Hueys in favor of Black Hawk helicopters, many of the service members feel as if they’re trading in for a new car: Yeah, it’s old, but man, it’s a classic.
“You still hear those comments from the guys,” Strub said. “It’s a very comfortable feeling for them to sit in the seat, strap on a safety belt and go fly because they know the vehicle so well. Very seldom does it fail on us.”
The service members of the 832nd and the 248th Aviation Maintenance Company include 25 full-time employees working at the facility and the mechanics who work on the helicopters.
“I can hear them from my home in Saukville,” said Sgt. Dale Allen. “It’s like the old Volkswagen — it just keeps going.”
“They don’t break down very often,” said Sgt. 1st Class Mike Petashnick of Mayville. “I’ll miss that whop-whop sound over my house.”
Sgt. 1st Class Glen Hamer said whenever he talks to Vietnam veterans, they mention Hueys’ distinctive cadence, made by the two-blade rotor. The new Black Hawks will have four blades, which make a smoother sound.
Chief Warrant Officer Herb Theisen of West Bend said his brother-in-law, who fought in Vietnam, always knew the sound was bringing combat coverage, medical attention or a letter from home.
“It was everything to those guys,” Theisen said. “He says it’s the Sound of Freedom.”
It meant everything to the people the facility’s Hueys helped lift off rooftops and highway overpasses during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Strub said, who greeted the guardsmen with hugs.
During the companies’ deployment to the disaster, the Hueys put in about a year’s worth of flight time in about a month. The Hueys have a maintenance phase-through after every 150 flight hours, and a complete overhaul after 2,400 flight hours.
“We went into Katrina with vehicles that just came out of phase, and by the end, were begging to go back in,” said Staff Sgt. Todd Wilcox.
The helicopters are serviced after each flight, whether they’re stationed at a fort — as they were at Fort Louis and Yakima Training Center in Washington state from 2003 to May 2005, transporting injured soldiers, lost hikers and auto accident victims — or at round-the-clock disaster relief.
“About the only thing that doesn’t happen is we don’t sweep the sand off the floor of the vehicle,” during the sun-up to sun-down emergency work, Theisen said. “If your car breaks down on the side of the road, you can just walk away. If your aircraft breaks down, you’ve got to get that baby on the ground if a problem comes up.”
“That’s the first think you really learn flying in the mountains — you can never have enough power, you can never have enough fuel,” said Retired Staff Sgt. R.D. Johnson. “There’s just not a lot of places to grab fuel out there. You have to find a place to land.”
The next deployment of the Hueys is scheduled to be for training in Hawaii, where a joint exercise with the Air Force will simulate the military’s response to a tsunami in a Third World country in January and February. The Hueys will be loaded onto the back of C-5 transport airplane and flown over the Pacific Ocean to the islands.