One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power

by Smith, Douglas V.

  Against this backdrop, Erickson accompanied Kenly to Stratford, Connecticut. After conducting what the official history termed an “inspection,”9 he spent two nights composing his report.10 The proposal was also shaped by the state of the war in the Atlantic. May and June 1942 were the months in which the Allies lost the greatest tonnage to date to submarines. Of over 1.2 million tons of merchant shipping lost in two months, over 90 percent was lost on the fringes of North America.11 Erickson recognized the potential utility of the helicopter for anti-submarine warfare. Initially envisioning these aircraft as scouting platforms that could extend the search horizon of convoy escorts, the proposals redefined the proposed use of rotary-wing aircraft from the Coast Guard–specific task of rescue operations to a task with which the Navy was struggling: anti-submarine warfare. Erickson’s concept involved the operation of helicopters from platforms mounted on merchant vessels, providing additional search assets and allowing a smaller number of escorts to protect effectively a larger convoy. Unescorted merchantmen could also be provided with a means of detecting and thus avoiding submarines.12 Erickson also posited the use of helicopters to deliver depth charges more accurately than did fixed-wing aircraft. He proposed a procedure that would later become helicopter in-flight refueling (HIFR) and suggested that helicopters could rescue the crews of vessels that did fall victim to submarines. These rescue operations, while a core Coast Guard capability, were couched in terms of relieving other ships in convoys of this dangerous task that made them more vulnerable to submarines. While the broad array of potential benefits did convince his immediate superiors within the Coast Guard, the Navy remained skeptical. The Bureau of Aeronautics did issue a planning directive that called for the procurement of four Sikorsky helicopters for further research and development.13 A planning directive proved to be a far different thing than an aircraft on hand.

  Erickson’s proposals did receive strong support from his chain of command. The Commanding Officer of Air Station Floyd Bennett Field and the District Commander, Rear Admiral Stanley Parker, who was a qualified aviator himself, both strongly endorsed Erickson’s letter.14 In November 1942, Parker also made the pilgrimage to Stratford to see Sikorsky and his machine. More importantly, Parker wrote a personal letter to Vice Admiral Russell Waesche, Commandant of the Coast Guard, suggesting that the commandant view a demonstration of the Sikorsky helicopter. On the advice of Parker, Coast Guard pilot number seven and the senior aviator in the Coast Guard, Vice Admiral Waesche, did just that on 13 February 1942, witnessing what Erickson called “a very impressive demonstration.”15 So impressed was the commandant that upon his return to Washington he requested a meeting with Admiral Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).

  Outside the Coast Guard, events were in motion that would further the cause of developing Navy helicopters. Grover Loening, a German immigrant who received the first postgraduate degree in aeronautical engineering granted by Columbia University, was an aviation pioneer. He was also a consultant to the War Production Board, an organization chartered to regulate the production of war material and the allocation of resources. Loening supported development of helicopters for anti-submarine warfare. He also advocated that the project not be carried forward by the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, but rather that it be assigned to the Maritime Commission, War Shipping Administration, or the Coast Guard. Concurrent with Loening’s intercession on behalf of rotary-wing, anti-submarine aircraft, Britain weighed in with an order for two hundred Sikorsky helicopters for anti-submarine work.16 If the U.S. Navy was not sold on the concept, the Royal Navy certainly was.

  All these events converged to provide the background for the meeting between Admirals King and Waesche. King remained under significant pressure to stem the losses among merchant shipping caused by submarines.17 The British support for helicopters was a double-edged sword, as King and his British counterparts were famously adversarial.18 In the end, the needs of the Battle of the Atlantic prevailed. Waesche offered another tool with which to combat the German U-boats. Two days after Waesche returned from Connecticut, King, either in his capacity as CNO or as Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, began issuing a series of directives. The Coast Guard was given responsibility for developing helicopters to combat the submarine threat. The Bureau of Aeronautics was directed to carry out tests to determine the suitability of the Sikorsky helicopter for ship-based anti-submarine warfare. The Commandant of the Coast Guard, in turn, appointed Kossler to lead the Coast Guard effort, which, in effect, made him responsible for the development of all naval helicopters. Kossler, in turn, arranged for orders for his friend Frank Erickson to report to Stratford, Connecticut, to begin training as a helicopter pilot. His instructors were Igor Sikorsky and C. L. “Les” Morris, Sikorsky’s chief test pilot.

  In May, a Combined Board for the Evaluation of Ship-Based Helicopter in Antisubmarine Warfare was appointed, with representatives drawn from the staffs of Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet; the Admiralty (Royal Navy); the British Air Commission; the U.S. Coast Guard; and the Bureau of Aeronautics. Representatives of the Army Air Forces, the War Shipping Board, and the National Advisory Commission on Aeronautics—the predecessor of NASA—later joined the board. This board was, in today’s lexicon, an interagency effort. Some question exists whether this helped or hindered the effort.

  Colonel Gregory’s demonstration on board SS Bunker Hill occurred three days after the creation of the board, long before the board would reach any decisions. The U.S. Maritime Commission did not provide a representative to the Combined Board but did work closely with the War Shipping Administration, which had split off from the commission. The commission did provide the ship for the demonstration. Grover Loening, observing as a consultant to the War Production Board, pronounced the tests successful and described the takeoffs as “remarkable.”19 The Bureau of Aeronautics was less sanguine, citing the calm conditions under which the tests were conducted. The board met ten days after the test and raised a series of additional questions. The most important questions revolved around the manner in which the helicopters would be employed operationally.20 Specifically, questions of basing the aircraft on merchant vessels versus escorts, the number of aircraft needed for an effective screen, and the number of flight hours between overhauls for the helicopters as compared to the hours required to cover convoys at all points to the acceptance of their value.

  The tenor of the board’s deliberations demonstrated a shift in the direction the Navy was pursuing. As the board was chartered by Admiral King as Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, and included a substantial number of Navy members, the former policy could have been preserved or at least the requirements set forth could have impeded development rather than focus the effort on creating an effective weapons system. While the initial test had been arranged by Igor Sikorsky before the board began functioning, the initial meetings, conducted to consider the implications of the test on Bunker Hill, demonstrated the synergistic effects of an interagency team. The obstructionism of the Bureau of Aeronautics was transformed into a more constructive conservatism, grounding the project’s sound logistic and operational principles. The enthusiasm of the Coast Guard and the Maritime Commission was tempered, avoiding attempts to overstate the effectiveness of the new technology, an all too common fault of advocates of any new weapon system or doctrine. In the end, the board sought to define the doctrinal parameters within which the helicopters would be utilized and to ensure the decisions were made on the ability to operate effectively over the longer term.

  The immediate result of these deliberations was to schedule three additional tests. Modern flight tests are still conducted in a “build up” fashion, beginning with familiarization and relatively simple tasks and expanding the operating envelope by stages. This process minimizes the additional risk incurred with each progressively more difficult phase of testing. The design of this series of tests employed this same philosophy. The first test was to be conducted in calm water, replicating Gregory’s success on the Bunk
er Hill and familiarizing the new helicopter pilots with the necessary procedures. These airmen would, in turn, conduct further tests. The second phase was designed to explore the effects of ship motion in a seaway on the operability of helicopters. The third phase, what today would be termed operational test and evaluation, involved conducting operations from a vessel in convoy to and from Europe.21

  The merchant vessel SS James Parker, the former SS Panama, was a troop transport. Fitted with a trapezoidal platform on the stern, she foreshadowed the flight deck configuration of most future vessels operating helicopters.22 On a short run from New York to the Virginia Capes, she was the platform for three days of testing in the Chesapeake Bay. The tests were successful in their stated aim with ninety-eight flights completed by the embarked helicopters, the XR-4 used in the original test on Bunker Hill and the improved YR-4A version.

  The second phase of the tests was conducted aboard MV Daghestan, a bulk freighter acquired by the British under Lend-Lease. The “seaway” in question was the Long Island Sound. While the sound has a fearsome reputation as a dangerous body of water in a storm, the sea was smooth for the majority of the test. A team of twenty-six pilots and observers, led by Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Frank Erickson, conducted over three hundred launches and recoveries in November 1943. The only deficiency noted was one familiar to a later generation of helicopter pilots—starting and stopping the rotor blades in high winds proved difficult or impossible unless the ship maneuvered to reduce the apparent wind over the deck.23 The “success” triggered the third and most challenging phase of the test series. The unfortunate choice of the Long Island Sound as the test location would have serious implications for Lieutenant (jg.) Stewart “Stu” Graham, Coast Guard Helicopter Pilot Number Two, who would lead the next effort.

  The third phase, an operational test under combat conditions as part of a convoy, followed in January 1944. Stu Graham would embark with the British Helicopter Service Trial Unit and two YR-4B helicopters aboard Daghestan. The test proved to be a grueling trial. High sea states, high winds, and convoy doctrine that precluded the Daghestan from varying from her assigned course and position in the convoy effectively grounded Graham for all but two days of the voyage. The ship rolled, pitched, and yawed. Her bulk cargo of grain shifted in the hold, giving it a permanent list of 5 degrees. In the end, the helicopters did very little patrolling. The brief windows of opportunity for flying were spent demonstrating that the helicopters could launch and recover under open-sea conditions. The fragile nature of the aircraft and the limited utility due to operational restrictions led the board to recommend that no further ship-based helicopter operations be conducted until a more robust aircraft became available. Admiral Waesche reluctantly agreed, downgrading the R-4, re-designated the HNS-1, to service as a training aircraft. This setback did not dampen Frank Erickson’s determination to demonstrate the potential of the helicopter.

  Newly promoted and assigned as the Commanding Officer of Air Station Floyd Bennett Field, Commander Frank Erickson continued to apply his drive and imagination to the development of the helicopter. In December, before the Daghestan debacle, the Chief of Naval Operations had directed the establishment of a separate helicopter training program, to be established at Floyd Bennett Field. Erickson found himself in charge of establishing a naval helicopter training program. Having trained Graham and others, he had the credentials. His fertile imagination put in place various innovations. A 40-foot by 69-foot movable platform was developed to simulate ship motion ashore. Pilots could experience worst-case conditions in an environment where a stable landing surface was readily available in the event of mechanical problems or student difficulties. The Royal Navy still maintains a similar device today, used primarily for flight test; while mechanically more sophisticated, it is essentially the same device invented by Erickson and his command.

  Erickson had been instrumental in equipping the test aircraft with float-type landing gear. He continued to pursue a variety of other innovations. Under Erickson’s direction, and frequently with him at the controls, various new devices were introduced. Development of an autopilot for the HNS-1 was begun in 1944. In a parallel effort, the Hayes dunking sonar, originally developed for blimps, was successfully mated to the XHOS-1 helicopter, the newest Sikorsky variant. In March 1945 the tests were reported complete and successful. Unfortunately by the time an effective antisubmarine helicopter had been developed, the submarine threat in the Atlantic had been extinguished, as would be the Nazi regime that spawned that threat. A sling for carrying a stretcher was demonstrated and a hydraulic rescue hoist was also developed, but the Navy was still not interested in the helicopter as a rescue vehicle. Budget cuts, programmatic cuts, and further delays were on the horizon, but the concept had been proven. It would require further crises to spur further development.

  EARLY HELICOPTER OPERATIONS: SOMEONE ELSE’S SOLUTION

  Erickson’s innovations charted the course for Navy helicopters for over half a century. In possession of these fragile, awkward aircraft, the Bureau of Aeronautics included them in a series of postwar tests. In the changing strategic environment, these tests were part of an effort to demonstrate the capability of the carrier to operate in the arctic regions, where potential crises involving the United States and the Soviet Union were expected to play out. The embarked HNS-1 helicopters, wearing Coast Guard colors and flown by Coast Guard pilots, demonstrated an ability to cope with the extreme conditions. The confluence of events again furthered development of Navy helicopters.

  Following the conclusion of World War II, the Coast Guard successfully navigated the delicate passage between operational control of the Navy and its administrative home waters within the Department of the Treasury. In doing so, Coast Guard helicopters also departed the Navy inventory. In response, the Navy acknowledged the potential of these assets, establishing Helicopter Development Squadron THREE (VX-3) to “study and evaluate the adaptability of helicopters to naval purposes.”24 The critical fact remained the need to adapt equipment that had not been designed for shipboard operations to that most demanding environment. During the war, the Coast Guard leadership had been skeptical of the Navy’s commitment to rescue operations. It proved to be an inaccurate assessment in the long term. Plane guard, providing an airborne alert for conducting the rescue of downed aviators, was the principal mission delegated to the helicopters. “Study” by VX-3 led to evaluation, including assigning a detachment of HOS-3 helicopters to the spring Atlantic Fleet exercise of 1947. During this period, the helicopters conducted twenty-two plane guard missions, leading to six rescues. A contemporaneous article in the Proceedings of the Naval Institute extolled the superiority of the helicopter as a rescue platform, as well as its versatility in performing numerous other missions.25

  The deployment proved a fateful one, leading to the establishment of two helicopter utility squadrons. These squadrons would form the nucleus around which the rotary-wing community would grow over the ensuing seven decades. The Helicopter Utility Squadron TWO (HU-2) would be assigned the responsibility of training future rotary-wing naval aviators, assuming this responsibility from VX-3, which was disestablished at the same time HU-2 began operations. This would raise questions regarding the standardization of helicopter training. Some aviators, like Lieutenant William Knapp, the first Navy helicopter pilot to be so designated, were trained by the Coast Guard. Others obtained their qualifications through VX-3, while still others were designated after receiving training at Helicopter Utility Squadron ONE, or at the Naval Air Technical Center at Patuxent River, Maryland, or from the Sikorsky Aircraft Company directly. Standards for the qualification of aviators as helicopter pilots were issued by the Chief of Naval Operations in June 1948. These standards provided for the recognition of these variously obtained qualifications but placed the responsibility for future qualifications on HU-2.26 Providing this training while simultaneously supporting detachments for utility and search and rescue missions would prove a daunting tas
k, so daunting, in fact, that it would rapidly become apparent that a dedicated training establishment would be required.

  A new command, in a new location, would assume the responsibilities of training Navy helicopter pilots. As Pensacola, Florida, assumed a larger role in the peacetime naval aviation training establishment, it was only logical that dedicated helicopter training would be transferred south as well. In December 1950, Helicopter Training Unit ONE (HTU-1) was established at Ellyson Field. In January of the following year, the training and qualification responsibilities of HU-2 were reassigned to HTU-1.27 The subsequent evolution of the training mission would see various re-designations of this command, but Helicopter Training Squadron EIGHT (HT-8) still provides “advanced helicopter flight instruction to all U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Coast Guard helicopter flight students.”28