I couldn’t let Air Force Day go by without a salute to my brothers and sisters in blue. I thought I’d post a card that isn’t typical of what people think when they think “Air Force.”
“The Huskie, displayed at the AF Museum, W-PAFB (Wright-Patterson Air Force Base), Ohio, was used primarily for crash rescue and aircraft fire-fighting. It carried two rescuemen/fire fighters and a fire suppression kit suspended beneath the aircraft. It could often reach a crashed airplane before ground vehicles arrived. Foam from the kit plus the powerful downwash of air from the rotors could open a path through flames allowing rescuers to reach crash victims.”
This helicopter had only an 860 horsepower engine, but it had a top speed of 120 miles per hour and a range of 185 miles. It’s a little over 17 feet high and 47 feet long, and the rotors are as long as the craft itself. It had a ceiling of 25,000 feet. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be up that high in a chopper, watching passenger jets cruise by.
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