{"id":3686,"date":"2016-01-15T05:45:13","date_gmt":"2016-01-15T13:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=3686"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:55","slug":"the-winged-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/the-winged-s\/","title":{"rendered":"#146 The Winged S Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I look back on them, these may very well have been the best years of my life in some ways. \u00a0I learned a lot of lessons during my four years in the military.\u00a0 This is the story of one of those lessons.<\/h3>\n

I had barely avoided the draft and stayed out of the swamps of Viet Nam by joining the Draft Dodgers\u2019 Yacht Club, AKA the U.S. Coast Guard.\u00a0 After a wasted year teaching \"Brianrifle-slinging to recruits, I\u2019d finally gotten a berth at an \u201cA\u201d school and was a third class Aviation Electrician\u2019s mate.\u00a0 As an \u201cAirdale\u201d I checked out in all three aircraft at my duty station of San Francisco.\u00a0 They were the C-130, where I performed the rather boring chore of \u201cScanner\u201d, the HU-16 Albatross, with its slobbering round engines and ability to land in water, and my favorite, the HH52A Sikorsky Helicopter.\u00a0 That latter was the best duty for an enlisted man.\u00a0 From time to time we got to fly as co-pilot and even get a little stick time.\u00a0 But our main job was to man the hoist in the open side door and bring grateful and usually waterlogged victims aboard.\u00a0 It was the meat of Coast Guard duty, that of lifesaving.\u00a0 But it wasn\u2019t always so noble.<\/h3>\n

We weren\u2019t the only Coast Guard Units charged with plucking victims from the sea.\u00a0 A<\/h3>\n
\"Sikorsky
The HH52A<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

fleet of Coast Guard Cutters did the same job.\u00a0 Invariably, there arose a bit of competition between the \u201cAirdales\u201d and the \u201cBlackshoes\u201d.\u00a0 We had the advantage.\u00a0 The lumbering amphibious helicopter could usually get to the scene of an accident first.\u00a0 We\u2019d \u00a0be the heroes who plucked the victims from the water.\u00a0 The patrol boat, often a forty-footer would be relegated to towing the wreckage or the half-sunken sailboat, to port.\u00a0 We Airdales would be showered with thanks and praise, while the poor schmucks in the boat would arrive in port to little or absolutely no celebration.<\/h3>\n

I remember one case in particular.\u00a0 It was in San Francisco Bay, so it\u2019s not like anyone had to battle the waves of the open sea to arrive on scene.\u00a0 A guy had overturned his<\/h3>\n

\"633The soaking victim can be seen being hoisted in the basket while his boat lays foundered in the water.\u00a0 You can’t see the looks of disgust on the part of the boat crew!<\/p>\n

sailboat.\u00a0 It was foundering in the water and so was he.\u00a0 The water was cold and he was growing hypothermic and fatigued.\u00a0 We arrived on the scene about the same time a \u201cforty-boat\u201d from a nearby lifesaving station did.\u00a0 Our pilot tried to contact the boat on the radio, but had no luck on any frequency.\u00a0 We had some equipment for just such problem.\u00a0 I broke out the big chalk board and wrote \u201cNeed help?\u201d in big letters.\u00a0 I showed it to the boat below as we hovered alongside.\u00a0 The pilot was watching the horizon, and depended on me to be his eyes on altitude and position.\u00a0 The coxswain of the forty-boat read my sign, then scowled and raised his hand with one finger extended.\u00a0 There was no mistaking the fact that he preferred that we mind our own business and leave him to this rescue.\u00a0 I relayed his reply to the aircraft commander:\u00a0 \u201cHe wants us to pick up the guy in the water,\u201d I said to the pilot.<\/h3>\n

Down we swooped and, with well-practiced competence, dropped the rescue basket alongside the victim.\u00a0 He scampered into it, we hoisted him into the helicopter and swooped off to the warmth of the Coast Guard Air Station.\u00a0 We left the forty-boat to drag the foundered sailboat back to the marina.\u00a0 As we departed, I could see the boat crew jumping up and down with anger.\u00a0 I smirked and soliticitously covered our victim with a nice warm woolen blanket.<\/h3>\n

There was a relationship between the Coast Guard and the Sikorsky Company, which manufactured our helicopters.\u00a0 The Coast Guard at that time was firmly convinced<\/h3>\n
\"Sikorsky-VS-300-Helicopter_01\"
Igor Sikorsky flies one of his first successes.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

that they had to have a boat hull on their helicopter.\u00a0 Sikorsky specialized in boat-hulled helicopters.\u00a0 And founder Igor Sikorsky had long held the belief in the special nobility of the helicopter, since it was so well-equipped to rescue those who had crashed, were shot down, or just otherwise in need of rescue.<\/h3>\n

Ol\u2019 Igor thought that the mission of life saving was SO important a part of the work of his birds that he\u2019d established a special award for those who piloted or crewed Sikorsky helicopters during their rescue missions.\u00a0 It was called \u201cThe Winged S\u201d award and it was a coveted award bestowed on \u2018Copter crews.\u00a0 I\u2019d never received one.\u00a0 I really hadn\u2019t given it a lot of thought.\u00a0 The work itself was its own reward, as far as I was concerned, so I really wasn\u2019t lusting after a Winged S.<\/h3>\n

Imagine my surprise when at an all-hands formation, I was called up and presented with a lovely, framed Winged S award, complete with Igor Sikorsky\u2019s signature.\u00a0 The award didn\u2019t state anything about why I\u2019d been so honored, but it did state the date on which I\u2019d performed so heroically.\u00a0 As I received the award, shook hands with the CO, then saluted smartly and returned to the ranks, I was just dying to figure out what this heroic deed was.<\/h3>\n

As soon as I got back to the barracks, I pulled out my little logbook of flights and quickly flipped to the date that was listed on the award.\u00a0 There it was.\u00a0 It seemed that on the day that coxswain flipped me off, I was performing so heroically that I was awarded an winged S.\u00a0 Gee I felt like I shoulda shared it with that finger-waving sailor!\u00a0 Nah.\"631<\/h3>\n

My “winged S” award, complete with Igor Sikorsky’s rubber-stamped signature on the right.<\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

I guess I learned something that has held my ego in check ever since that day:\u00a0 One man\u2019s thievery is another man\u2019s heroism.\u00a0 Or, don\u2019t take the \u201cWinged S\u201d TOO seriously!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Down we swooped and, with well-practiced competence, dropped the rescue basket alongside the victim.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3695,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,40,67,197],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}