Bell UH-1 Iroquois

Ted and his team snapped their carabiners into the line and began liftoff.

They came under fire immediately as the UH-1H Iroquois pulled away.

The rescue helicopter was hit by gunfire and began to lose altitude and Ted and his crew dangling beneath.

It became evident the chopper was going down.

But that was about halfway through my experience.

a year on what's called the EW Thornton which is a floating drill rig and I'll send a little photograph quite an unusual one so I had a moon pool in the middle so on that morning my first morning I get on the bus get to the heliport we're all sitting waiting And I look across and there's an old Bell Huey helicopter.

It's like you're in Vietnam, honest to God.

It had the doors open, had the canvas seats inside.

He's flown a variety of helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft.

The helicopters include the OH-13, the helicopter you've seen in the series MASH, the UH-1 Huey, the AH-1 Cobra, and the OH-6.

After flying with the Army in Vietnam, he joined the Air Force, where he flew the T-37, the T-38, the RF-101 Voodoo, and then the RF-4 Charlatan.

After flying with the Air Force, he went on to fly with the airlines, flying the 727, 737, 757, 767, as well as the Airbus 319, 320, 321, and 330.

My earliest recollection is in May of 1970.

The unit I was in, we were involved in the invasion of Cambodia.

And I was brand new, and I was in the right seat of a UH-1, and we were doing combat assaults into Cambodia, and then flying sniffer missions and doing combat resupply.

And during one of those missions, we were shot up very, very badly, and I took some rounds.

Even if it's been a while since I've actually sat behind the controls.

But I started in the UH-1 Huey, commanded a company in Desert Storm, with the irony then being that we had Hueys in our unit that were older than some of the mechanics that were working on them.

Now, what did that particular helicopter do? What was your job?

The UH-1 Huey is a lift helicopter.

It moves supplies and it moves people.

It does air assaults to move soldiers into the battlefield and the like.

Yeah.

Vietnam pushed the envelope further with the dust-off units, bringing the patient inside the cabin of the UH-1 Huey.

Which was a big step.

They started initiating rudimentary care en route.

On Thursday, October 18th, 1973, at approximately eleven PM, four US Army reservists of the 316th Medical Detachment were flying from Columbus, Ohio, to Cleveland, Ohio.

They were an air ambulance unit flying a Bell UH-1H Iroquois, better known as the Huey.

At ninety knots, it's about an hour-and-a-quarter trip, and their altitude was twenty-five hundred feet.

They were on AFTP duty, which means just flying some hours to keep current.

because we're going to have veteran storytelling.

We've got raffles and bake sales, local veteran musicians, veterans resources, and a UH-1 Huey from the Michigan Flight Museum that you can purchase tickets to take a ride in.

I think that's going to be really cool.

So again, that's Radio on the River.

That's on Winans Lake Road.

And you can find it by just going to freedomriver.org. And also going to our website, veteransradio.org, and click on the helicopter that's in the banner there because the Michigan Flight Museum is, again, providing us a Huey for rides.

Isn't that cool? And we're hoping to get a Chinook there, not for rides.

That's just going to be a static display because when those guys come in, they'll probably blow the whole neighborhood apart.

Veterans resources are going to be there, some VSOs.

Hopefully the VA is going to be bringing their big... disability claims trailer out there to answer any questions that you might have.

And as I mentioned before, that the UH-1H model Huey is going to be there from the Greyhounds, the 240th Assault Helicopter Company that was out of Bearcat in Vietnam.

So come on out, mark that calendar.