THE OLD GUARD
Many Pedro Pilots went on to fly “Jollys” and their earlier experience in PEDROS provided the needed abilities to perform tasks
required in these larger “Dump Trucks”.
DetCO and Pilot Hubert “BERT” Berthold
describes one of these lateral tasks.
Steve
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The
HH-43 gave me a lot of good memories and was the biggest help when I
transitioned to HH-53. During air refueling, I applied the skills
acquired during HH-43 scrambles. We all remember when scrambling in the
HH-43: Strap in, clear, engines started and lift off to the
barber pole. It took a gentle touch to get the nose of the
helicopter to the right spot (tape) on the barber pole so that the ground
crewman standing on the trailer could hook-up the fire bottle. That skill of applying a gentle touch to the flight controls made
it easy for me when air refueling from either wing of the C-130 day or
night.
To refuel
in-flight, the HH-53 extends its telescopic probe and flies it
into a drogue, which is attached to a retractable hose that trails behind
a pod on the C-130. Two refueling pods
are mounted outboard on each wing. The
drogue is a conical-shaped basket and in center is the receptacle
for the probe. The receptacle is connected to the end of the hose
through which the fuel is pumped to the helicopter. There are louvered spokes
around the basket from the receptacle to the rim that are designed to funnel
air. Around the rim of the basket is a
white cloth to provide stabilization.
For night refueling there is lighting on the pods, hose and drogue that
helps guide helicopter pilots to a rendezvous. The helicopter approaches the
drogue while it is in the trail position behind the C-130. Once the
helicopter probe is engaged into the drogue receptacle the helicopter
flies up to draft on the wing of the C-130 while refueling. After
refueling, the helicopter drops down behind the refueling pod and slowly slips
back to disengage from the drogue.
I always
imagined the drogue receptacle as the tape mark on the barber pole and eased
the probe into the basket (drogue). Thanks
to the years of flying the HH-43 and all the practice pickups of
the fire bottle, it made air refueling a lot easier for me.
Bert
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