I was thinking and thought I would ask if you would share what you guys have seen carried as a sling load by a Chinook. Please feel free to share your sightings. I am wondering if any of you have seen a 10 ton Oshkosh HEMTT truck sling loaded by a Hook?? Is this even possible?? The biggest thing that I can remember seeing is a 5ton Army truck during Desert Storm.
Personally, I haven’t seen much, but there’s a picture hanging in Ford Hall here at Rucker that’s got a D model Hook with six FAVs (that’s Fast Attack Vehicle, kinda like an armed dune buggy) slung underneath. Pretty cool shot.
I’ve got more experience with watching CH-53s sling load, but, like HeavyArty said, the Hook can carry pretty much whatever it wants. I’ve seen photos of one picking a crashed Huey out of a rice paddy, I’ve seen them carry single howitzers (cool photo of the whole battery, Gino!). Also, humvees, fuel bladders, Rangers on a SPIE rig…
The more I think about it, is there anything a Hook CAN’T sling-load?
Well I have never seen a whole lot slung by Hooks but I can think of a few people who I would like to see slung under a hook then dropped into a very deep dark well! [swg]
Fanatics of any kind ( except modelers ) Gangstas - gangsta wannabees, illegal drug makers, drug pushers, the rotten parents who drive children to use those drugs and act like that in the first place!, bad cops, 50% of all lawyers and THE DESIGN TEAM at Trumpeter Models! …phew …that felt good!
The USCG got some assistance from a Hook unit a few years ago after a hurricane washed some big buoys far inland from their station. The buoys were 8’ diameter and 26’ long.
What about the HEMTT Truck?? Is it even possible for a Hook to lift it?? It does weigh in at 10 tons!!! If the Hook could lift it the fuel range would not be that great. It is a pritty big truck!!
My unit (196 ASHC “Flippers”) slung live water buffalos in Vietnam. IIRC, there was also a scene in Apocalypse Now where a Huey slung a small water buffalo.
Guess what the water buffalo does shortly after leaving the ground?
When I was stationed at Ft. Bragg (3-8 FAR “LEG” dirty and nasty) we slung our M198 howitzers under CH-47s fairly often.Quite an experience I must say.
To answer you question, No, a hook can’t lift a HEMMT. It can lift that new version of cargo truck…the name escapes me. Only the stripped down plain jane version and you have to be light on gas. This is of course with the 50k MGW rule. Heaviest thing I’ve ever lifted from a Chinook was a MI-24 Hind, somewhat stripped. Those bad boys are heavy, this one was 21,500. We only had to take it about 5 miles.
There was at least one instance when B Co 2/159th at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah used one of their D models to do the same thing with a GA National Guard CH-54.
The event took place in the mid 80s, apparently the NG bird had problems while in Florida, and the resident hook unit (prior to 3/160th taking up residence at HAAF) was asked to help sling load the bird back…five miles out the load was set on the ground so another '54 from the GA NG could sling load it the rest of the way back to HAAF. Apparently to avoid the embarrasment of having a '47 sling loading a '54 in front of everyone at HAAF.
There was another instance of a CH-47D slingloading 9 (nine) full fuel blivets out of a FARP on the Honduras/Nicaragua border in the mid 80s. I didn’t beleive the guy who told me about it until I saw the photos (this was in the mid 80s and prior to the widespread use of digitial photography).
Personally, the strangest things I have been involved with slingloading was the base of a control tower from Camp Stanton (Tonggo-ri) to Camp Page (Chunchon) and the ever present F-16s( and pieces of them) out of Kunsan AB that seemd to auger in on an almost regular basis.
In the early 80s the unit I was in used to haul rocks (as opposed to ROKs)…Then when M-198s started arriving in Korea we hauled those for the Arty units (with CH-47Cs) and we hauled alot of bridge sections for the Engineers along the Imjin and Han Rivers.
Back in the early 90s, I was flying a Cessna 140 as a camera plane for a lift coming out of Lakehurst Naval Air Station. The heavy lift unit at Ft. Indiantown Gap was tasked with slinging some Navy aircraft destined for the Air Victory Museum in Medford, NJ.
The F-4, A-7, and A-4 all arrived okay, but on our 4th and final leg, we were flying large circles around a Chinook slinging an A-5 Vigilante that was minus its wings.
Apparently (and I’m no lift master, so I’m relating what I was told), the fuselage weighed in at something like 23,000lbs., but because of the large surface area, no one took into consideration the added force caused by the downdraft from the rotors. About 10 minutes into the flight, the rear sling let go, and the Vigi went tail-first towards the ground. The Chinook went vertical nose-down, and the loadmaster dropped the load. The Chinook went almost upright, and the Vigi plowed into the ground, wiped out a family’s swimming pool and fence, but fortunately didn’t hit any houses or cause any injuries.
When we got on the ground, an Army Col. confiscated the videotape we shot (it was a regular VHS tape style camera). Although it made the local news, the story was quite subdued compared to what we saw. Ironically, the video we shot has never surfaced, never got released to the networks, etc. We were shooting for a local-access TV show.
Years later, when I director of the NJ State Aviation Museum, I had an opportunity to get a USMC F-4 from Andrews AFB. The Naval Museum at Pensacola (who was at that point in charge of the F-4) scrubbed the entire donation when they learned that the same unit that dropped the Vigi was also slated to lift our F-4.