In the military, helicopters have fulfilled their many missions.

By Robert F. Dorr

They scout enemy positions. They transport the president. They stalk submarines and “kill” tanks. Like angels of mercy, they descend from the heavens to rescue people in peril, on and off the battlefield.  ■ America’s military helicopters entered service during World War II, but it was during the Korean War that helicopters — once commonly called eggbeaters or whirlybirds — proved themselves in a variety of military functions.

“Helicopters have reached the point where they can carry out almost any mission the military needs,” says Walter J. Boyne, a retired Air Force colonel, author, and former director of the National Air and Space Museum. “We can’t yet give them every job we could give to an airplane, but we’re getting close.”

In a world where American culture often dominates, Americans can be forgiven for thinking that Igor Sikorsky, whose name adorns a premier helicopter company today, designed the first helicopter. He was first to build practical helicopters that took on serious missions.

But no one knows who was first. According to the American Helicopter Society, on Nov. 13, 1907, French pioneer Paul Cornu piloted a twin-rotor helicopter into the air for a few seconds. A contemporary of Sikorsky, Germany’s Heinrich Focke, flew a helicopter in 1936.

Lawrence Bell, who hated to fly and held no special love for rotary wing aviation, became a helicopter pioneer for his Model 47 developed in 1944; it became the bubble-nosed H-13 flying ambulance of MASH fame. Charles Kaman, the only helicopter pioneer still alive, devised a meshing-rotor concept seen in the Vietnam era H-43 Huskie. Other American pioneers included Stanley Hiller and Frank Piasecki.

The best known among them, Sikorsky, piloted the initial flight of his prototype Sept. 14, 1939. Sikorsky followed up with the R-4 (later H-4) for the Army Air Corps, called the HNS by the Coast Guard, and first flown Jan. 13, 1942. One of these craft pulled off history’s first combat rescue in Burma in April 1944, prompting Col. Philip G. “Flip” Cochran of the 1st Air Commando Group to write, “Today the eggbeater went into action and the damn thing acted like it had good sense.” The Coast Guard version became the first U.S. helicopter to operate from the deck of a ship, the cutter Cobb, in 1944.

Sikorsky’s next design was the R-5 (later H-5) in Air Force talk and the HO3S to sailors, Marines, and Coast Guard members. It was first flown Aug. 18, 1944. In 1948, then-Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Texas), campaigning for reelection, hired a civilian version to haul him around his Texas district. In real life and in the film adaptation of James Michener’s The Bridges at Toko-ri, an HO3S-1 took off from an aircraft carrier to attempt to rescue a downed pilot fighting in a Korean paddy field — William Holden in the celluloid version.

A bigger, beefier Sikorsky product, known as the H-19 to soldiers and airmen, the HRS to Marines, and the HO4S to sailors and Coasties, was the first rotorcraft to transport battlefield supplies and troops during the Korean War. An HRS unit led by Lt. Col. George Herring launched Operation Windmill I Sept. 13, 1951, flying 28 sorties and hauling 19,000 pounds of supplies to a Marine battalion holding a hilltop in the embattled ridge area, called the Punchbowl.

By the end of the Korean War, larger helicopters pulled rescue, transport, and antisubmarine duty. In Korea, the Army was embarrassed when it introduced the H-19 two years after the Marine Corps. Post-Korea, seeing nuclear war with the Soviet Union on the horizon, Army officers vowed never again to be in second place. They launched a period of experimentation that advanced aviation technology and warfighting tactics. A board led by Gen. Hamilton Howze explored using helicopters the way the cavalry used horses.

Among Cold War ideas that didn’t really work was an Army vehicle meant to whisk an infantryman into battle like a comic book superhero, on a platform above whirling rotors. It was too much for the draft-era buck private and was quickly overtaken by a seminal event: On Oct. 22, 1956, the Army completed the first flight of what became the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, alias the Huey, using the first practical helicopter gas turbine engine, developed by Anselm Franz.

The public recognizes no other helicopter so readily. “The design behind the Huey was sheer genius,” says CWO4 Michael J. Novosel, who flew casualty evacuation missions in Vietnam. Of 19 aviation Medals of Honor in the Vietnam war, 10 went to helicopter crewmembers; eight of those, including Novosel’s, were earned in Hueys. A UH-1E Huey crew led by Marine Corps Capt. Stephen W. Pless pulled off a dramatic rescue under fire to become the most decorated aircraft crew in history. Pless received the Medal of Honor, while his three crewmembers were awarded the Navy Cross.

The Huey’s successes in the November 1965 Battle of Ia Drang Valley were told in the book We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, USA-Ret., and Joseph L. Galloway, starring Mel Gibson in the film version. Americans won that battle because Huey pilots kept returning to hot landing zones to deliver ammunition and haul out wounded.

No other mission captured the hearts of soldiers like casualty evacuation. The Army coined the term “dustoff” for the medical rescue mission. Because of the speed and agility helicopters offered under fire, the ratio of dead to wounded in warfare changed: In Vietnam, tens of thousands who might have died were saved. Dustoff pilots, medics, crew chiefs, and gunners extracted 970,000 wounded from battle zones, according to the Army Surgeon General’s office.

The Marine Corps did not have a dedicated medical evacuation mission as the Army did. In Marine helicopter squadrons, everyone evacuated wounded. Marine Hueys were supplemented by more robust choppers like the twin-tandem CH-46 Sea Knight. Not atypical of CH-46 pilots was Marine Maj. David Althoff, who logged 1,080 combat missions, many during the siege of Khe Sanh, and received three awards of the Silver Star.

Air Force Hueys and CH-3E Jolly Greens flew special-ops missions into denied territory and rescued hundreds of downed airmen in Laos and Vietnam. Coast Guard members did not bring helicopters to Vietnam but flew in combat on exchange tours with the other branches.

Since Vietnam, helicopters have increased in size, speed, and versatility. Helicopter aviation has led to the Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and other hybrids that combine the best advantages of both rotary-wing craft and airplanes. The helicopter is now indispensable to U.S. military operations and is performing more military missions than ever, around the world.