March-April 2025

Mike Bodnar
307B N Main Copperas Cove, TX 76522
254-542-1961
E-mail: mbodnar27@gmail.com

A Nice History of the Huey: Stemmed from a Korean War era requirement for a medical evacuation (MEDEVAC) helicopter, the ‘Huey’ family of helicopters saw action widely during the Vietnam War. In fact, the Huey is often referred to as a synonymous icon with the war in the southeast Asian country. The story of the UH-1 (and the AH-1 ‘Huey Cobra’) is an interesting one that finds itself centered on the Vietnam War.

First generation helicopters were large, lumbering, cumbersome airframes that were described as ‘maintenance nightmares’ full of complexities. The U.S. Army began to search for a design that was easier to maintain as a utility and multipurpose helicopter, specifically for the role of MEDEVAC and instrument training. The Army selected a design submitted by Bell Helicopter from a pool of 20 designs in February 1955. The following year, the prototype XH-40 made its first flight, but by this time the Army had already requested six more XH-40s to be built. Finally in 1960, the Army ordered 100 of the helicopters using the designation HU-1. Valérie André, the First Woman to Fly Helicopter Rescue Missions in Combat, Dies at 102.

This is a condensed version of an article written by Phil Davison of the Washington Post. French army neurosurgeon and pilot known as ‘Mademoiselle Helicopter’ flew more than 160 wounded men from battlefields in Indochina to hospitals in Hanoi.

Valérie André, a French military officer, brain surgeon, and licensed pilot who was believed to be the first woman to fly helicopter rescue missions in combat zones, during the French-Indochina war of the early 1950s, and who two decades later became the first woman to reach the rank of General in the French Armed Forces, died Jan 21 in Paris. She was 102.

Helicopters were still relatively new contraptions for widespread military use when France sent some in 1950 as air ambulances to support its Troops in Indochina, the French colonial protectorate in Southeast Asia that included Vietnam. The French military was in a pitched battle against Vietnamese anti-colonial communists, including Ho Chi Minh.

She returned to France in 1950 to get a military pilot license to fly two- and three-seater helicopters and was back in Southeast Asia later that year. She flew a Hiller 360 that bore Red Cross markings. Because of the weight limit, she flew alone so she could strap a stretcher onto each skid. (It was to her advantage that she was petite and weighed less than 100 pounds.)

She flew over 120 chopper missions in Indochina, often landing on jungle airstrips or near rice paddies amid enemy fire. One French war correspondent in Hanoi who met her at an airport before she took off on a rescue mission described her as ‘small, very thin, with a magnificent mass of chestnut hair,’ adding that she chain-smoked Camel cigarettes. Local Vietnamese civilians, who had never seen a helicopter before, nicknamed her ‘The woman who comes down from the sky’ or ‘Quekat’—Vietnamese for ‘Madame Ventilator’ or cooler fan—because that’s what the chopper looked like to them.

Military records show she flew 168 wounded men from the battlefields to hospitals in Hanoi. Most were French soldiers, but there were also many enemy communist fighters, the Viet Minh, whom she insisted on taking if she had space. Ultimately, the French withdrew in 1954 after losing a 55-day battle at the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.

‘She was a one-woman MASH unit,’ Jean Ross Howard Phelan, one of the earliest American women to receive helicopter accreditation, in 1954. After Indochina, where she earned the French Croix de Guerre, the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, and the U.S. Legion of Merit, GEN André served as a Sikorsky helicopter pilot in Algeria in the late 1950s. U.S. Army T901 Improved Turbine Engines:

Our newbie Medevac crews are getting a more powerful engine, which will make life a bit easier flying the heavy Medevac UH-60M. Sikorsky started its first-ever ground runs on a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter equipped with two GE Aerospace T901 Improved Turbine Engines (ITE). During this test, the T901 engine demonstrated its capabilities through a series of rigorous procedures. The initial light off and ground runs were executed by a combined U.S. Army and industry test team and operated by Army and Sikorsky pilots. “Soldiers will rely on Black Hawk helicopters well into the future, and upgrades to the aircraft today will pay dividends for decades, enabling new missions such as deploying and managing launched effects,” said Hamid Salim, vice president of Army and Air Force Systems at Sikorsky.

A modernized Black Hawk fleet will create new operational opportunities for the Army by extending the capabilities of a proven, fielded fleet to travel farther on less fuel and with more Troops and cargo. The T901 engine will increase the Black Hawk’s power by 50 percent, while also improving fuel efficiency and is a critical component of the roadmap to a modernized Black Hawk, a key part of Lockheed Martin’s 21st century security vision. Sikorsky H-60M modernization efforts continue to be primarily focused on ITE, as well as Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA)/digital backbone and launched effects. Digital innovations, such as a new sustainment digital twin, improve safety and mission readiness while reducing costly downtime and unscheduled maintenance. Since 2022, Sikorsky has demonstrated the ability to reduce pilot workload and increase safety by incorporating proven autonomy capability into Black Hawk. Helijet Donates Medically Equipped Helicopte

To Ukraine Designed by Ukrainian-born Igor Sikorsky’s renowned helicopter company, the Sikorsky Aircraft S-76A helicopter is the first private donation of an aircraft of this magnitude from Canada to Ukraine, organized by the joint efforts of Canadian business and the Ukrainian diaspora. Helijet International is donating a fully operational, medically equipped helicopter from its fleet to be used for missions of mercy in Ukraine. Helijet has signed an agreement with a consortium of Canadian and Ukrainian non-governmental organizations Maple Hope Foundation, the Ukrainian World Congress, and Initiative E+ to accept the delivery and title of a Sikorsky S-76A air ambulance helicopter.

Together, the three organizations have been working with Helijet over the span of eight months to arrange the shipment of the aircraft to Ukraine. The Sikorsky S-76A is a fully equipped air medical helicopter that Helijet had previously provided under contract to the Ministry of Health for patient transport in B.C. The aircraft has now been recently removed from that service but still has years of flight capability remaining. The gift is made on condition that the helicopter is used solely for non-commercial, humanitarian, and medical evacuation missions to airlift individuals in need of urgent medical care to hospitals in Ukraine.

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