#1 Destruction Island

Laying Power Cable from the Mainland to Destruction Island, pulling cable spool using the Chinook. Capt. Rick Dominy 

 

#2 Quillyeute, Destruction Island

Removing 11,000 gallon Diesel Fuel Tanks from Destruction Island to Quileute Airfield

 

#3 Chehalis Recruiting

Recruiting Mission to Chehalis, the one where we blew the awning off a downtown store

 

#4 Olympic National Park

Olympic National Park Support for the Youth Conservation Corps, 1974, Dale Morris and Mike Jones

 

#5 Clallum Bay

Setting football field stadium light poles for Clallum Bay High School, Doug Houser, Mike Jones

 

#6 Seattle Center

Setting 4-ton bronze statue called “Moses” at the Seattle Center near the International Fountain. Capt. Errol VanEaton. 

 

#7 Snohomish Valley Flood

Pulling a surplus Army amphibious DUCK out of the mud in a Snohomish Valley barnyard during the flood of 1974. Capt. Rick Dominy, CW3 Mike Jones. 

 

#8 A Model Ferry Flight

A Ferry Flight to forget November, 1973~4. Bringing home an A Model Chinook from Harrisburg PA. 2 internal 600-gallon fuel tanks and a little over gross at takeoff. Remember the old VNE computers in the A Model? Our calculated airspeed, at any altitude, was off the low end of the chart. 60 Kts and she started to shake, and she quivered.   We made the trip in 3 days! Well, almost. We made it, the helicopter took a little longer. Capt. Rick Dominy, CW3 Mike Jones, FE, Bill Finney

 

#9 YFC to GRF Night Flt

Night formation flight from Yakima to Fort Lewis. If you were on it, you know the one I’m talking about. Several of our birds ended up in fields out of fuel... I need details, names, and dates boys.

 

#10 Puget Sound Rescue

Rescue mission on Puget Sound. Hooker crew spotted an overturned canoe near the north end of Vashon Island a mile or so from shore. The crew made a saltwater landing and pulled two very hypothermic high school kids to safety.

 

#11 C-141 Crash on Mount Constance

Recovery Mission on Mount Constance in the Olympics (may be wrong on peak name) to recover wreckage and bodies from an Air Force C-141 that ATC mixed up tail numbers with a Navy jet having the same last 3 and told the Navy jet to begin descent, however, the Air Force crew, hearing their tail number and descent instructions, began a letdown, when they should have maintained altitude. The Air Force crew began the descent and slammed into a vertical rock wall 50 feet below the summit of the mountain at 230 Kts.  We staged out of Port Angeles Coast Guard Air Station where we brought back wreckage. Need crews, dates and details.

 

#12 Winter SAR, Cascades

Search and Rescue mission during a winter storm to locate an air ambulance Cessna 210 on a flight from Spokane to Seattle with a pilot, flight nurse, and patient. Aircraft iced up and crashed on the western slopes of Cascades near Snoqualmie Pass. Capt. Errol VanEaton found them. 

 

#13 Egg Drop

Egg Drop mission at Kellogg Middle School in Shoreline District. Students had to devise a recovery box to safely cushion a raw egg, simulating a delicate science package landing on the moon, when dropped from a Chinook hovering at 500 feet over the football field. 

 

#14 Canada Annual Training, Williams Lake, BC

AT Support for Canadian Forces Combat Engineers at Williams Lake, BC. We hauled 10,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate for end of exercise explosives demonstration. The flight was made dodging thunderstorms. 1984 AT. That same mission, Barb, our FE, and the rest of the crew received a commendation for saving the lives of two soldiers pinned in their pickup truck when it flipped over. We had to race back to Williams Lake to get the “Jaws of Life” to free them. Ask Barb how she got the “Jaws of Life”  designation.

 

#15 Inadvertent IFR Save of Civilian Pilot

Civilian Pilot, Inadvertent IFR, then trapped VFR on top, Chinook launched to find and guide the Cessna pilot down through overcast conditions. Capt. Errol VanEaton. Paine Field credited with the save. 

 

#16 Ocean Shores Drill Weekend

2nd Flight Platoon Weekend Drill at Ocean Shores. Hosted by Ocean Shores Chief of Police, CW2 Michael Wilson. 

 

#17 Makah Bay Drill MUTA 5

September Drill conducted at Makah Bay Air Force Radar Station. Sling load missions to clean beach area and move equipment. Who will ever forget that drill... We drank the NCO club dry Saturday night. Sunday morning one of our pilots, who shall go unnamed, arrived at the helicopters a few minutes before departure driven by a captivating Indian maiden in a fast car. Major Krofcek just happened to be where the young lady dumped off our pilot. What an arrival! 

 

#18 Martha Lake Tavern Saturday Nights

Skinny dipping at Martha Lake Tavern on drill weekend Saturday nights. It was a mission, really.

 

#19 Saving Snohomish Valley Cows During Floods

Delivering Hay to stranded livestock in the Snohomish Valley during spring floods, 1974, 75.

 

#20 Snohomish Flood Dike Repair

Emergency Sling Load missions carrying tons of sandbags to repair failed dikes at Ebbe Island.

 

#21 Pilchuck Fire Lookout Restoration

Sling Load mission for Mount Pilchuck Fire Lookout restoration effort. CW4 Doug Houser

 

#22 Darrington High Ice Movie

Huey and Chinook support NBC Movie, “High Ice” starring David Jansen, shot in and around Darrington, Washington. We did all the stunt flying seen in the film. Chinook crew placed a Huey rigged with explosives on the side of Whitehorse Mountain for the big crash scene. Major Errol VanEaton, Capt Rick Dominy, CW3 Mike Jones, CW3 John Clayton, CW2 Dean Sawyer, and others. 

 

#23 Kautz Glacier High Altitude Rescue

Mount Rainier Rescue of a climber who slid 1100 feet down Kautz Glacier. Done in marginal weather at 11,000 foot level of the mountain. Injured climber taken to Valley General Hospital in the Chinook. He survived.

 

#24 Mount Baker Summit

Depending on a small technicality, a PIC, who shall remain anonymous, made a picture postcard landing on top of Mount Baker’s 10,780 foot summit, just outside the little sliver of “Wilderness Area” running down from the top on the south flank of the mountain. It would be the last Chinook to ever land there. (I have a great photo of the landing suitable for framing, along with a copy of the letter to the pilot, from the CO to verify the event...)

 

#25 Lake Washington Boat Fire

Huey crew spotted a powerboat on fire near Kirkland on Lake Washington. They hovered near the burning boat to keep smoke and flames away from people on the boat and used rotor wash to move the vessel away from other boats. Need details. This happened while we were at Sand Point. 

 

#26 Fort Lewis Rangers

Night Paradrops at Fort Lewis for the Rangers. 

 

#27 Issaquah Jumpmasters Certification Weekend

3-day Jumpmaster certification course held at old Issaquah airport. Most of the jumpers had never gone out of a Chinook.  School offered free instruction and first jump to the Chinook crew, no takers.

CW4 Doug Houser, CW4 Mike Jones. Need FEs name. It may have been Bill Finney.

 

#28 Fort Lewis Jumpers

Fort Lewis Sport Parachute Club drops from 12,500 feet.  The only time I wish I had a parachute in a Chinook. 

 

#29 Fort Huachuca Huey Ferry Flight

1972 mission to pick up our first two Hueys from Fort Huachuca, Arizona. CW3 Mike Woodruff, CW3 Mike Jones, CW2 Larne Gabriel, and one other pilot. Need CE names.  Leaving Huachuca, we only made it as far as Tuscon before a trunnion bearing let go on the swashplate. A CW2 flew a new part to us in an OV-D. We had another unfortunate breakdown at Las Vegas and had to spend a few days awaiting a new battery.

 

#30 USCG Patos Island PCB Cleanup

US Coast Guard missions to Sand Juan islands at Patos Island lighthouse to remove PCB contaminated soil.

 

#31 Hegley Peak Lake Quinault Lookout Tower Removal

Hegley  Peak fire lookout tower and cab removal for Olympic National Forest district, 1973. Cab weight estimate was way low. Chinook crew of Dale Morris, (need other pilot and crew names) attempted the lift. Cab rotated on one corner of the tower, then swung free dragging the Chinook towards the trees with max torque pulled in, and then some...  The load was taken to a staging area at the base of the peak where the helicopter was again “stressed”  to stop the descent. Capt. Errol VanEaton came in to fly the cab back to Paine Field. The Park Service said we could keep the cab if we could get it home. It sat in the alert hangar for years serving as an office for the motor pool. The cab may have been free for the taking, but the Chinook required two new engine transmissions and a C-Box.

 

#32 Tokeland Crab Delivery Flights

Who can forget the Friday night fights to pick up Reservists around the State for weekend drill... A popular destination was Tokeland out on the coast. CW2 Bob Young (The Deacon) worked on a crab boat, so when we arrived to get him he had a forklift carrying a large wooden box full of Dungeness crabs, all very active and very upset. Back at Paine Field, everyone who wanted crab drove up to the back of the Chinook and helped themselves. I got home around midnight with a trunk full of crabs and didn’t want to wake the wife, so put the live crabs in the refrigerator. The next morning she couldn’t figure out what all the scratching noises were coming out of the refrigerator. All was forgiven when she got over the initial shock of opening the fridge door.

 

#33 Double Tree  Inn Southcenter Helicopter Rally

The monthly air races to the Southcenter Double Tree Restaurant.  This was before Hueys when we were at Sand Point. Once the morning formation was over, the pilots would crank up the Hillers and race to Southcenter. Whoever got there first had the prime parking spot, the helipad on the roof of the restaurant. The manager thought this was great. It attracted people to the place. The looser‘s had to park across the street in an empty field.

 

#34 Bear Creek Idaho Ranger Cabin Relocation

Bear Creek Ranger Station, northern Idaho. Removal of remote ranger station cabin to a new location outside the wilderness area. We worked in conjunction with the Nevada Army Guard flying a pair of CH-54s out of Reno.  We were flying Super C Models at the time. They were a little surprised when we were able to lift a back-ho tractor that was slated to be a “Crane Load.” At the end of the day, all three aircraft departed for Boise.  We let the two Skycranes depart first. They had the people pods installed and as we approached them from the rear, some of their crew were sitting on lounge chairs watching us very rapidly approaching. Who could pass up a chance to humble a CH-54 straining to do 110 Kts.  We beeped her up to 245, and blew by the lumbering Cranes at 150 kts+, followed by a respectable cyclic climb.

 

#35 Yellowstone National Park B-47 Bomber Crash Site Clean-Up

in September of 1992

Our fame and expertise spread throughout the National Park Service because of the work we did on Mount Rainier and other parks in the region. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a KC135 tanker jet and a Strategic Air Command B-47 Stratojet bomber collided in the evening skies 8 miles south of Old Faithful. The tanker landed safely. The bomber was not so lucky. The B-47 clipped the right wingtip of the tanker striking the cockpit and instantly killing the two pilots. Below the bombardier/navigator was able to eject. He was the only survivor. The bomber went into a flat spin from 25,000 feet and impacted in 12 feet of snow. Ironically, it was a Ft. Carson CH-47 Chinook who found and rescued the sole survivor of the crash the next day. The Hookers, with Mike Carney’s Air Attack crew from Mount Rainier National Park, were asked to remove the 29-year-old wreckage. In five sling loads, all the wreckage was removed and the crash site returned to its pristine condition. 

 

Stay tuned for more Hooker Adventures as they come in.

 

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