from http://www.forceaerienne.forces.gc.ca/news/2004/06/03_e.asp
Posted on 07/28/2004 6:56:47 AM PDT by Clive
Canada's aging Sea King helicopters have become synonymous with the public's image of our military. Out of date and irrelevant, yet costing a fortune to maintain.
You know the jibes. The Sea Kings are a sick, aging fleet, with pieces literally falling out of the skies. They're "flying coffins." The Sea Kings are so clapped out they are death traps that have killed 10 crew members and injured over a 100 others.
Even the Sea King pilots themselves got into the act, famously adopting as their theme song an adaptation of the 1970s pop hit Seasons In the Sun: "Goodbye papa, please pray for me. My helicopter's crashing in the sea. (Chorus) We had joy, we had fun, we had Sea Kings in the sun. But the engines are on fire and the Sea Kings must retire."
Very funny. The sort of black humour the folks in uniform love. In a strange way, Canadians inside and outside the military have come to revel in the image of our poor little army, navy and air force as outmanned, outgunned and forever nickel-and-dimed by successive Liberal administrations.
And there is, of course, much truth in the image - particularly when it comes to politicians screwing up military procurement programs. That's been par for the course in Ottawa since the days when we sent Canadian boys into the trenches in the First World War with modified hunting rifles that jammed in battle and boots which seemed to melt on contact with mud.
But what the vast majority of Canadians outside the military don't know, perhaps because they couldn't care less, is that our Forces have a reputation for getting the most out of their aging, inferior equipment - and that when they are given decent, modern gear they can do the most remarkable things.
The Sea King, believe it or not, is a perfect example.
Back in the 1960s, when they entered service, they were state-of-the-art anti-submarine helicopters with a real role in the Cold War. They had only a couple of serious drawbacks. Sea Kings are big, weighing nearly nine tonnes, and conventional military wisdom was that you needed an aircraft carrier to operate them - and Canada had just scrapped its last aircraft carrier.
And you couldn't operate them successfully at night.
So when the Canadian navy suggested Sea Kings could be operated from the deck of a modified destroyer, day and night, most military experts thought they were nuts. But they did it, inventing something called a "beartrap" which snags a cable dangling from the helicopter and then winches it down onto the heaving deck - an area about the size of your average driveway.
I've watched this operation a few times, and you couldn't pay me enough to do it in a North Atlantic storm, at night, but our people did just that for decades. To say most of the world's navies were impressed is an understatement, even if the vast majority decided you had to be daft, or Canadian, to make it standard operating procedure.
The European-designed Cormorant helicopters we bought several years ago for search and rescue are already conducting operations which would have been impossible for their predecessor, the old Labrador. In December, 2002, a Cormorant conducted a 1,600-km round-trip to get an injured Norwegian sailor to hospital - in winds of up to 130 kmhr, refuelling twice at the Hibernia oil production platform! In January 2003 another Cormorant rescued all 16 members of the crew of the Finnish cargo ship, "Camilla," - in a single, death-defying trip.
The military version of the Sikorsky H-92, which will be Canadianized into the Cyclone, is similarly state-of-the-art, if a little smaller. It is based on the same technology used in Sikorsky's Black Hawk helicopters, which have seen five million hours of service with U.S. forces.
I am not a helicopter expert, and I don't know if the Cyclone or the Cormorant is the better machine. But I do know this. Give the Canadian military either one and they will do things with it no one else can or would do.
Bravo Zulu
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Thanks for sharing the article. It's nice to read something positive about our friends to north once in a while. :-)
John F'ing Kerry would have voted FOR the Sea Kings, before he would vote against them!!!
I'm sorry. It's just all this coverage of the conventiona and all ...
"Cormorants" ? This name does not ring a bell, and I thought I knew my helos...Do you have pictures of them ?
from http://www.forceaerienne.forces.gc.ca/news/2004/06/03_e.asp
I know mechs in the Corps that are working on Chinooks that were used in the EARLY days of Nam! The damn birds are FAR OLDER than the mechs working on them and the footdragging continues. I say, make the Congcritters and Sens fly around in them vice those fancy private planes. After a few crashes, they'll be crapping the funds for the Osprey.
I gather that they are a 'civilian' variant on Britain's Merlins - some more background at http://www.sfu.ca/casr/101-ch149.htm
Sadim
Is that the new airplane/helicopter the US Marines are lobbying for ? It doesn't look as if it wants to fly to me.
Wow, thanks, I'll need to update my helo files, I'm afraid.
(snip)I know mechs in the Corps that are working on Chinooks that were used in the EARLY days of Nam!
True but the "shithooks" as we used to call them have an excellent safety record.Unlike the Blackhawks that have gone down so many times we used to call them "crashhawks"
Odd. I would have thought that's how the public characterizes Canada's Health Care System.
True enough. The shithooks are getting old though. We had one "crashland" onto the field at Camp Hansen when I was at the Staff Academy and the crew exited whiter than Casper the ghost.
No Chinooks in the Corps. CH-46 ("Sea Knight") yes, CH-47 no.
Give them up to snuff equipment and let them use their best efforts for other purposes.
Laugh if you will...
I listen to Radio Canada pretty regularly.
The Coromant was the pick before they cancelled the contract. Then, realizing they really needed to replace the Sea Kings,
Chretien couldn't very well go back and pick the same company that they just paid cancellation penalties to, and
couldn't choose a US company, so the Canadian aircrews continued to suffer casualities while Chretien pulled
another Bill Clinton and left it for the next Government to make a decision.
FWIW, they're getting beat up on that fact that the Sikorsky H-92 was the "best choice for the money", and isn't in
service anywhere, iirc, etc.
I witnessed this harrowing "winch-em-down" operation in relatively calm seas and you couldn't pay me enough money to try it with a bird that big. That was twenty years ago, and they're still at it with the same equipment? Good Lordamighty...
The Cormoran that was later purchased for search and rescue is a somewhat less expensive version of the EH101 with less fitting-out for embarked operations.
The aircraft is designated CH-149.
Canada purchased 15 of them for search-and rescue with deliveries between 2002 and 2004.
It was only a fortnight or so ago that the CH-113 Labradors stopped flying past my home in Scarborough en route to the chopper pads on St.Michael's Hospital and Hospital for Sick Children and the Cormarants began to appear.
A CH-113 Labrador is being donated to the Canada Aviation Museum in a fly-past ceremony today at Ottawa at about 1400hrs.
Wow, nice birds...and really neat pictures, too. Thanks a lot !
The Canadian military is incredible. I think that's why so many Americans feel nothing but disdain for the Canadian people who continue to allow such fine men and women to go unequipped into battle. Their snipers are FIRST CLASS, and as the article says, they have been able to keep those flying coffins in the air. I don't know how the people can look themselves in the eye with the despicable way they have treated those who would protect them.
Sad but true. Don't forget that the reason the reason the Chretien liberals cancelled the EH-101 purchase was because they had gotten political mileage out of decrying them as overly expensive "Caddilac" helicopters during the election campaign, and promising to cancel the deal. Why they felt they had to keep that promise when they broke so very many others, I don't know. Although, the gov't was in a tight spot budget-wise at the time.
I've been to quite a few SARTech BBQ's at airforce beach at CFB Comox, I remeber those things flying around all the time when I was a kid...I know a few techs that work on the CH-149's those helos have had a few "teething" problems, but thing are working out.
The EH101 is actually bigger than a Seaking and the ships that have them would be required to retrofut the onboard hangers, costing more to the tax payer...the H92 is a better fit, requiring no upgrade of the hangers...
Obviously the winchdown and beartrap landing system will still be needed.
Agreed. A sniper of the Patricias took out a Taliban at a distance of two and a half klicks.
How'd that turn out?
They were given one day after receipt of the Privy Council approval to put the contract together and deliver the cheque.
And on the Defence budget.
We have our own variations. No, not Halliburton.
During Puff Daschle's reign, Boeing almost got a deal for leasing tanker aircraft, instead of selling outright,
and another company got a sweet deal on providing non-working baggage screening machines in a mandated ratio (1-2or3) to
the other company whose machines did work.
Oh, and it was just coincidence that the lobbying firm for both Boeing and the crappy screener company had Mrs. Puff
Daschle as a partner.
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