Wonderful story, it brought tears to my eyes. This type of heroism and compassion are what is missing from our world today. God bless these courageous people, may we all step up and do our part.
I'd seen the footage of this event many times from different sources and it was always in the context of the failed US campaign in Vietnam...kind of a spiteful jab at America. Should have known there was a real story and a fake one.
I wondered if that was a possibility too, so I asked a former CH-46E crew chief I work with, and he replied that, "If all the required inspections (the preflight stuff) had been complete to ready a helicopter for flight, an aircraft can be positioned, started and take off in about 30-minutes. Likely none of them were ready though and then it would be several hours."
Wonderful story, it brought tears to my eyes. This type of heroism and compassion are what is missing from our world today. God bless these courageous people, may we all step up and do our part.
I'd seen the footage of this event many times from different sources and it was always in the context of the failed US campaign in Vietnam...kind of a spiteful jab at America. Should have known there was a real story and a fake one.
Why didn't they just have the helicopters take off until the Cessna landed?
I wondered if that was a possibility too, so I asked a former CH-46E crew chief I work with, and he replied that, "If all the required inspections (the preflight stuff) had been complete to ready a helicopter for flight, an aircraft can be positioned, started and take off in about 30-minutes. Likely none of them were ready though and then it would be several hours."