Those Things We Done To Accomplish The Mission

There were a lot of things we did to cut through the crap in those days. We had a Sikorsky Tech Rep, Rubin Hardy who bought jeep fan belts in Bangkok for the transmission oil cooler.

A lot people never knew we put 250-ft hoists on our H-43s. All you had to do was order an F model drum and cable and put it in. When I was Det Co at Nha Trang in 67, I agreed to take an H-43B as a third bird. Davy Allen flew it in out of Thailand. Imagine, to my surprise it was one of my old birds from NKP, I think 280, but not sure now. When I bet Davy it had a 250-ft hoist on it, he lost when we ran it out. His argument was it wasn’t in the records. Well what can I say; I had good men that could get things done. (Note: See comment section below)

We didn’t hand pump fuel from fuel drums, we had three barrels connected by lines to the main and threw them out the back (clamshell doors off) just before pickup. Later we had F model self-sealing internals installed, but our mains were still just plain bladders! But even that was a helluva lot safer than the fiberglass internal fuel tank on the H-3. (As I remember, Joe Ballinger)