Alaskan Grizzly Bear vs Helicopter
This took place while I was stationed with the 5040th Helicopter Squadron at Elmendorf AFB, AK sometime between 1973 – 1975.
We had a good tight LZ, surrounded by seventy to one hundred foot trees on the outskirts of Anchorage, that we used for practice take offs and landings from confined areas. On this particular day as we made our initial pass of the LZ to size it up, we noticed a Grizzly Bear sow with two cubs out near the middle of the LZ. We made a couple of more passes over the LZ to try and scare them off the LZ. They did make a little movement toward the edge and the pilots decided to go on into a hover over the LZ and start down into the hole figuring that this would scare them off the LZ. As we came into our high hover the cubs started high tailing it for the tree line and once they got to the edge they climbed up into the trees. Mama Bear had also moved toward the edge of he clearing near where the cubs were up in the trees, so we started on down in the hole. As we got to about twenty or so feet off the ground, Mama Bear decided she had had enough of this big ugly, noisy, wind blowing ‘bird’ and that we were getting way to close to her cubs. She stood up on her hind legs and begin to come toward us as if to say .. ‘o.k. big bird …. come on…. I’m ready to take you on’!! We held our hover at about twenty feet to see if she would back off and leave us alone. She was having none of that …. She was ready to fight!
By now we were convinced if we went ahead and landed, we were going to have a fight on our hands and it might be a bit hard to explain that our CH-3E had been damaged in a Grizzly Bear attack, so we were the one’s to back off. We climbed on out to go and find somewhere else to play and mama bear headed toward her cubs. I could just imagine her telling them that she had just showed them the way to stand up to the USAF and their big, nosey, windy birds!!!
Luckily, we didn't quite get close enough to get gored (or in this case mauled) by Mama Grizzly, but I'm pretty sure if we had landed we would have had some damages to explain.
(Jim Burns)
We had a good tight LZ, surrounded by seventy to one hundred foot trees on the outskirts of Anchorage, that we used for practice take offs and landings from confined areas. On this particular day as we made our initial pass of the LZ to size it up, we noticed a Grizzly Bear sow with two cubs out near the middle of the LZ. We made a couple of more passes over the LZ to try and scare them off the LZ. They did make a little movement toward the edge and the pilots decided to go on into a hover over the LZ and start down into the hole figuring that this would scare them off the LZ. As we came into our high hover the cubs started high tailing it for the tree line and once they got to the edge they climbed up into the trees. Mama Bear had also moved toward the edge of he clearing near where the cubs were up in the trees, so we started on down in the hole. As we got to about twenty or so feet off the ground, Mama Bear decided she had had enough of this big ugly, noisy, wind blowing ‘bird’ and that we were getting way to close to her cubs. She stood up on her hind legs and begin to come toward us as if to say .. ‘o.k. big bird …. come on…. I’m ready to take you on’!! We held our hover at about twenty feet to see if she would back off and leave us alone. She was having none of that …. She was ready to fight!
By now we were convinced if we went ahead and landed, we were going to have a fight on our hands and it might be a bit hard to explain that our CH-3E had been damaged in a Grizzly Bear attack, so we were the one’s to back off. We climbed on out to go and find somewhere else to play and mama bear headed toward her cubs. I could just imagine her telling them that she had just showed them the way to stand up to the USAF and their big, nosey, windy birds!!!
Luckily, we didn't quite get close enough to get gored (or in this case mauled) by Mama Grizzly, but I'm pretty sure if we had landed we would have had some damages to explain.
(Jim Burns)
posted by Jim Moore at 12:19 PM
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