In early 1944, an Army YR-4B in Burma recovered four airplane crash survivors with four landings in Japanese-contested territory. According to Sergei Sikorsky, “While reading the mission report, Erickson realized that a hoist-equipped helicopter could have lifted the survivors to safety far more quickly, and the concept of the helicopter rescue hoist was born.” Igor Sikorsky himself visited AirSta Brooklyn in August 1944 and rode the rescue hoist a few feet in the air under Erickson’s hovering helicopter. “By October 1944, we were hoisting Stokes litters.”
SAVING LIVES, SCOUTING ICE
The end of World War II closed the Brooklyn helicopter schoolhouse. In February 1946, Graham became the project officer for the Naval Research Laboratory helicopter dipping sonar program, but the Coast Guard Rotary Wing Development Project Unit at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, continued rescue work. On Sept. 22-23, 1946, Coast Guard pilots Cmdr. Frank Erickson, Lt. “Stew” Graham, Lt. Gus Kleisch, and Lt. Walt Bolton were airlifted by Army C-54 to Newfoundland with an HNS-1 helicopter to evacuate survivors of an airliner crash 20 miles from Gander. They were joined by a new HOS-1 (the Sikorsky S-49/R-6) from AirSta Brooklyn. The two helicopters flying from makeshift helipads saved 18 injured passengers.
Here, an HOS-1 Hoverfly II flies over Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, Dec. 17, 1947. The service operated 27 HOS-1 helicopters between 1945 and 1949. Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives Photo
The Coast Guard subsequently ordered nine Sikorsky S-51s (HO3S-1Gs) delivered from 1946 to 1950. The 5,500-pound helicopter with a 450-horsepower Pratt and Whitney Wasp Jr. engine could seat a pilot and three passengers. In March 1949, Erickson was the chief helicopter development engineer at Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and flew one of the aircraft for an hour hands off with stabilizing airfoils under the main rotor. Elizabeth City also tested inflatable helicopter floats for emergency water landings. Meanwhile, Coast Guard helicopters continued to respond to real emergencies. In February 1950, Lt. Fletcher Brown flew an HO3S-1G from Elizabeth City to Arkansas to transport doctors and nurses to families cut off by St. Francis River flooding.
In addition to the early Sikorsky aircraft, the Coast Guard acquired Bell Model 47 training and utility helicopters for varied missions. The first two- seat HTL-1 taken from the Navy in 1947 surveyed and patrolled New York Harbor. An HTL-4 with floats flew ice reconnaissance from the Coast Guard Cutter Storis off Nome, Alaska. Three HTL-5s received in 1952 likewise scouted passages through arctic ice, and flew personnel and cargo from ship to shore over ice blockages. One was lost in a fatal accident from the icebreaker Northwind in 1954.
The HO3S-1G (S-51) was used for rescue helicopter development at Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Between 1946 and 1954, the Coast Guard flew nine Sikorsky HO2/3S-1G helicopters. The Navy version was immortalized in the movie The Bridges at Toko-Ri. Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives photo
Two four-place HUL-1Gs were transferred from the Navy in 1959, and flew ice reconnaissance from the Northwind, and later SAR and utility missions from the Storis in the Bering Sea. On April 12 and 13, 1961, Cmdr. Chester Richmond used one of the helicopters to fly a doctor and emergency medical supplies 43 miles over water in total darkness and hazardous weather from St. Paul Island, Alaska, to St. George Island to treat two critically burned people. He returned the doctor and patients to St. Paul Island at first light. Two more float-equipped HTL-7s loaned to the Coast Guard by the Navy in 1962 remained in service until 1968.
MORE POWERFUL PISTONS
Small, light helicopters initially operated by the Coast Guard were limited in performance and payload. When the U.S. Air Force sent prototype Sikorsky S-55s to Korea in March 1951, it launched a series of more capable 10-seat helicopters adopted by all the U.S. armed services – Air Force and Army H-19s, Marine Corps HRS, and Navy and Coast Guard HO4S aircraft. The Coast Guard received the first of seven HO4S-2Gs with 550-horsepower Wright radial engines in November 1951.
The HO4S-1 gave the Coast Guard a helicopter with night/instrument flight capability. Igor I. Sikorsky Historical Archives photo
On Jan. 19, 1952, Lt. Cmdr. Gordon MacLane flew a new HO4S-2 from AirSta Port Angeles, Washington, to rescue five survivors of an Air Force SB-17 SAR aircraft from a 5,000-foot-high crash site on Tyler Peak in Washington state. Starting in January 1952, 23 follow-on HO4S-3G helicopters introduced 700-horsepower engines and night/instrument flight rule capability. Then-Cmdr. Stew Graham flew the first recorded night hoist rescue in the Gulf of Mexico in January 1955. Another eight Marine HRS-3s were transferred to the Coast Guard.
Coast Guard rescue still relied on fixed-wing amphibians. However, an HO4S-3G reshaped public helicopter perceptions and Coast Guard aviation plans when a broken levee on the Feather River flooded Yuba City, California, on Dec. 23, 1955. The single helicopter from AirSta San Francisco hoisted 138 flood victims to safety in 29 continuous operating hours. The first 58 rescues were at night, and Lt. Henry Pfeiffer
maneuvered his aircraft among trees, power and telephone lines, and TV antennas to hoist people from flooded homes and deliver them to high ground. Lt. Cmdr. George Thometz relieved Pfeiffer at the controls and continued rescues without shutting the aircraft down. On one sortie, he rescued 14 adults and children from a roof while hovering close to a dangerous obstruction. Nationwide media coverage helped make the
helicopter the dominant rescue platform of Coast Guard aviation.