One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (53 page)

BACK TO THE FUTURE?

The decade following the end of the conflict in Vietnam would see a continued high operational tempo for the Navy. This tempo was necessary to meet an increasingly aggressive Soviet presence throughout the world. A significant element of this threat was composed of an ever-quieter, ever-more sophisticated submarine force. Among the weapons employed by these vessels, mines proved particularly problematic. An integrated approach was required to counter the many capabilities of this potentially hostile force.

First and foremost, individual ships and Battle Groups would be required to spend longer periods at sea. To maintain the level of operations necessary to monitor Soviet activity, rapid re-supply of ships at sea was essential. Vertical replenishment was the only effective answer.

Beyond critical logistic support, better detection and tracking of submarines was required. The original helicopter-based solution to this problem, DASH, had proved unsatisfactory due to the inability to deploy sensors, among other technical problems. The first solution was the LAMPS-configured SH-2D aircraft. While providing a dramatic improvement over ship-based sensors, this aircraft and the successor SH-2F proved to have limitations. All acoustic data were data-linked back to the ship and evaluated there with an inherent time delay in transmitting critical tactical data to the helicopter crew. On board the helicopter, the aircrew could listen to the sonar signals aurally and had real-time data from the MAD and radar, but relied heavily on communications with the destroyer or cruiser on which they were embarked. In addition to the time lag, the communications between the ship and the helicopter also served to make the ship more vulnerable by pinpointing its location.

The foundations of the Navy helicopter community rest on adaptation of aircraft developed for other purposes and other Services. The Navy would seem to have returned to this method in developing the next generation of shipboard helicopter. When the decision was made to replace the H-2 with a larger airframe, capable of supporting on-board acoustic processing, it did not simply adapt the Army UH-60 Blackhawk to Navy purposes. The entire airframe was completely redesigned, shifting the main structural supports to accommodate the stresses of shipboard landings and the low-mounted hard points necessary for torpedoes and external fuel tanks. The SH-60B Seahawk, also called LAMPS-III, proved a remarkably reliable and robust platform. More than an airborne adjunct to the ship, the Seahawk was capable of independent prosecution of submarines while maintaining contact with the ship through a discreet, directional data link that did not give away the ship's position. It proved so reliable that when the time came for a replacement for the venerable H-3 on the carriers, another version of the H-60 would be chosen.

Following the end of the Vietnam War, Navy helicopters returned to their traditional missions. Frank Erickson had proposed, and Commander Malcolm Cagle had extolled, the value of helicopters for ASW, logistics, and search and rescue. The valuable contributions of helicopters in other mission areas were willfully ignored. The Vietnam missions—gunship and combat search and rescue—were delegated to the reserves. The future would require a re-examination. Operations in Grenada would develop too quickly to admit the mobilization of the reserve CSAR squadron. The HS community would once again be pressed into service. The gunship squadrons, one on each coast, would transform into special operations support squadrons with CSAR as a secondary mission, equipped with yet another variant of the H-60. These squadrons would also experience obstacles in deploying for Operation Desert Storm. While they would be sent to the desert, their assignment to the Special Operations organization would preclude taking part in the Navy CSAR Task Force that operated in the Arabian Gulf. Instead, the HS squadrons, flying SH-3H airframes, armed with only M-60 machine guns and without self-sealing fuel tanks, would again be called on. Ironically, it was not the HS-12 Wyverns who established the CSAR helicopter detachment in the northern gulf, nor the other HS squadrons with whom they shared that duty, but a LAMPS detachment that would record the only opposed Navy rescue of Desert Storm.

Most of the drama for Navy helicopters in Desert Storm proved to be reserved for the LAMPS detachments. While the destroyer on which the CSAR helicopters were based was repositioned southward for replenishment, Lieutenant Kenneth Szmed and his crew were called on to rescue an Air Force pilot down in the water off Kuwait City. LAMPS crews also provided radar guidance to British Lynx helicopters, enabling them to approach enemy patrol boats at wave-top heights to avoid detection before firing their ship-killing missiles. The CSAR detachments did participate in the liberation of the first Kuwaiti territory set free, Qaruh Island, which was liberated by embarked SEALs, transported in Wyvern H-3s, covered by Army OH-58 helicopters.
⁴⁴

The successors to the RH-3 minesweepers of Vietnam were also busy. In the intervening years, a new helicopter community was born. The increasing sophistication of Soviet mines required larger and more sophisticated detection and sweeping gear. To handle these larger payloads, the massive H-53 heavy-lift helicopters were adapted to the mine countermeasure mission. These MH-53E aircraft swept channels to allow ships to approach the Kuwait coast, a key enabler for devastating naval gunfire support missions.

The collapse of the Soviet threat, combined with the lessons of Desert Storm, demonstrated a need for a re-evaluation of the structure, missions, and equipment of Navy helicopters. New missions, or rather old ones re-acknowledged, have come to dominate training and planning. Combat search and rescue, support to naval
Special Warfare, armed helicopters for striking small craft, surveillance using infrared sensors—all these missions reflect the legacy of Vietnam. They also represent necessary changes as other platforms have left the naval inventory. With the departure of the S-3 Viking from the scene, a new set of missions falls to Navy helicopters.

As naval aviation shapes a course for the future, rotary-wing aviation continues to play in increasingly important role. Ironically, as Navy helicopters assume more roles and a larger place in plans, fewer models will be available. In the end, after fifty years, only three H-3s remained in Navy service, performing SAR duty at NAS Patuxent River. These too were retired in 2009. Both the H-2 and H-46 airframes have been retired. The Navy is moving toward two H-60 models for all missions—the MH-60R and MH-60S. However, in recognition of the growing requirement for more helicopters and more pilots to fly them, a third helicopter training squadron was established at Naval Air Station Whiting Field on 25 May 2007. The Helicopter Training Squadron TWENTY-EIGHT Hellions will help train the increasing percentage of naval aviators who fly these rotary-wing aircraft. “The helicopter community remains at the core of Naval Aviation, and a robust and highly capable helicopter fighting force is a fundamental requirement for any Navy operation,”
⁴⁵
so opined the Navy's director, Air Warfare, in a 2004 article in
The Hook, the Journal of Carrier Aviation
. These sentiments, by a career fixed-wing pilot, represent a sea change. Naval helicopters have come of age.

NOTES

    
1
.
  
Sikorsky Aircraft, press release, n.d., “High Lights in the Development of the Sikorsky Helicopter,” Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives. While some sources indicate that fewer flights were completed, twenty-four is a consensus number and is supported by this and other documentation from the Sikorsky Archives.

    
2
.
  
U.S. Navy, Chief of Naval Operations,
United States Naval Aviation, 1910–1970, NAVAIR 00-80-P-1
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1970), p. 120.

    
3
.
  
Robert M. Browning Jr.,
The Eyes and Ears of the Convoy: Development of the Helicopter as an Anti-submarine Weapon
(Washington, DC: United States Coast Guard Historian's Office, 1993), p. 9.

    
4
.
  
U.S. Navy,
United States Naval Aviation
, p. 119; Browning,
The Eyes and Ears of the Convoy
, pp. 5–6.

    
5
.
  
Frank Erickson, “A Brief History of Coast Guard Aviation,”
The Bulletin
, (November–December 1966), p. 422.

    
6
.
  
Ibid.

    
7
.
  
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Executive Order 8929, 6 FR 5581, 1941 WL 4041,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=60917
(accessed 19 August 2009).

    
8
.
  
Browning,
The Eyes and Ears of the Convoy
, p. 4.

    
9
.
  
U.S. Navy,
United States Naval Aviation
, p. 114.

  
10
.
  
Erickson, “A Brief History,” p. 423.

  
11
.
  
Samuel Eliot Morison,
History of United States Naval Operations in World War II
, vol. 1,
The Battle of the Atlantic, 1939–1943
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1947; Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2001), pp. 412–13.

  
12
.
  
Frank Erickson, letter to Headquarters, U.S. Coast Guard of 29 June 1942; cited in Robert M. Browning, “The Development of the Helicopter,” Igor I. Sikorsky Archives,
http://www.sikorskyarchives.com/tdoth.html
(accessed 10 July 2009).

  
13
.
  
U.S. Navy,
United States Naval Aviation
, p. 115.

  
14
.
  
Erickson, “A Brief History,” p. 423.

  
15
.
  
Ibid.

  
16
.
  
Browning,
The Eyes and Ears of the Convoy
.

  
17
.
  
Papers of Ernest J. King, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center, Washington, DC.

  
18
.
  
Thomas B. Buell,
Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), p. ix; Williamson Murray and Allan Millett,
A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War
(Cambridge, MA, and London, England: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 189.

  
19
.
  
Grover Loening, memorandum to War Production Board, dated 14 May 1943, cited in Browning,
The Eyes and Ears of the Convoy
.

  
20
.
  
Browning,
The Eyes and Ears of the Convoy
, pp. 9–10.

  
21
.
  
Discussion of the similarity of the design of these tests and modern flight test procedures is based on the author's experience as a rotary-wing test pilot, including participation in seven dynamic interface tests conducted to determine the compatibility of the H-60 and H-3 series aircraft with a variety of naval and naval service vessels.

  
22
.
  
Most ships that routinely operate helicopters have a flight deck located at the stern or have no superstructure aft of and above the flight deck. The few exceptions tend to be vessels like the hospital ships USNS
Mercy
and USNS
Comfort
, which were not originally designed to operate helicopters.

  
23
.
  
Arthur Pearcy,
A History of U.S. Coast Guard Aviation
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1989), p. 59. All naval helicopters experience these problems to some degree, with the extreme case being the H-46 series. The problems of “tunnel strikes” while starting and stopping the rotors led to an extensive flight test program in the mid-1990s, in which the author was involved, to determine the cause and remediation.

  
24
.
  
U.S. Navy,
United States Naval Aviation
, p. 163.

  
25
.
  
Malcolm W. Cagle, “The Versatile Windmills,”
United States Naval Institute Proceedings
(July 1948): 833–35.

  
26
.
  
Roy A. Grossnick,
United States Naval Aviation, 1910–1995
(Washington, DC: GPO, 1997), p. 171.

  
27
.
  
Ibid., p. 756.

  
28
.
  
U.S. Navy, “HT-8 Eight Ballers: Squadron History,”
https://www.cnatra.navy.mil/tw5/ht8/history.asp
(accessed 15 December 2009).

  
29
.
  
Marcus O. Jones, “The Type XXI and Innovation in the German Navy during the Second World War,” paper presented at the Naval History Symposium, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, 10–11 September 2009.

  
30
.
  
Michael A. Palmer,
Origins of the Maritime Strategy: The Development of American Naval Strategy, 1945–1955
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1990), pp. 32–34.