Say Nothing posted:

clockwork automaton posted:

Internet Wizard posted:

actually guns are pretty cool, never mind

moist turtleneck posted:

quote:

The heavy, thudding noise of the main rotors - the characteristic wop-wop-wop sound - was caused by their huge size, 48 feet from tip to tip, and a 21-inch chord (width). With ballast weights at each blade tip, the whirling rotor system had tremendous inertia. The IP demonstrated this inertia with a trick that only a Huey could do. On the ground at normal rotor speed (330 rpm) he cut the power, picked the machine up to a four-foot hover, turned completely around, and set it back on the ground. Incredible! Any other helicopter would just sit there, not rising an inch, while the rotors slowed down. These big metal blades with the weights in the tips would serve me well in Vietnam. Their strength and inertia allowed them to chop small tree branches with ease.

quote:

Sky King told me later that he didn't believe we were going to make it. The clearing was a tight circle cut out of a stand of saplings, and the grunts had put too many wounded on board for us to hover. To top it off, we were under continuous fire.

What I did was considered reckless. The solution was automatic. The ship lost rpm at a one-foot hover, I could not leave anyone behind - because men were dying - and we were surrounded by fifteen-foot bushes and saplings. But we were on a hill. My instincts told me that if I could get through the barrier, the ship could dive down the side of the hill and we could fly. So, while Sky King advised me that we would have to drop at least one man, I shook my head and headed for the thinnest section of the vegetable wall. Luckily, the rotors are so high above the ground that they had to cut only the thinner tops of the saplings. Our nose forced through the branches and leaves, the skids tugged on clinging things, and the rotors exploded into the stuff. It sounded like we were crashing. Men screamed in the back of the ship. But even as we struggled through the trees and leaves and bushes, the ground dropped beneath us. The rotors cleared the tops, and we dragged the fuselage through the list of the foliage. We burst out of the thicket in a swirl of debris - a turbine-powered brush cutter. I sailed down the side of the hill, picked up some airspeed, and then climbed out. Sky King said, "I don't loving believe it!"

quote:

I hit the turn fast, banked hard over, and as we slipped toward the ground, I saw that I was going to hit some stuff anyway. The main rotor smashed some dead branches, sounding like machine-gun fire. I flared for the landing and we were down.

"Great. Now how are you going to get out?" said Sky King.

I didn't answer, because I didn't know how I was going to get out. The grunts grabbed the wounded man. He was unconscious, his fatigue blouse sopping with his blood. At that point I noticed the cameraman standing back filming the whole thing.. The grunts were prone beside him, laying out cover fire to ward the jungle. When I saw him aim the camera toward the cockpit, I sat a little straighter, and thought cool thoughts, in case those, too, might somehow be recorded. The crew chief called that we were ready, and the cameraman jumped on board.

In fact, there was no acceptable way to get out. There was not enough room to accelerate and bank back out through the slot. Some of the high branches hung over our rotor disk. By the book, we were trapped.

But I had seen rotor blades stand up to incredible stress before, so I decided to take the brute-force option. I picked up to the hover, turned the tail until it matched a slot in the overhanging branches, and then pulled the pitch. We climbed straight up twenty feet before the rotors smashed into cane-thick branches at nearly every point of their circle. It sounded like the rotors were being smashed to pieces. Seconds later we cleared the treetops and I nosed over, accelerating to ward the airstrip five miles away.

"Someday you're going to hit a branch that's just a little too big," Sky King said after a long quiet.
"What then?" I asked.
"Then your ship's going to come apart, and you're going to kill yourself and everybody around you."
"Now that's frightening," I said. "I think maybe I oughta quit this job and go home."

MrBigglesworth posted:

Would it be possible for someone to gif then stabilize this from 5 to 15 seconds?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqNVY5_MFug

Say Nothing posted:

Haruharuharuko posted:

Goddamnit Japan

Aericura posted:

Away all Goats posted:

Say Nothing posted:

Skippy McPants posted:

Oh, so many ways this could go horribly wrong.

CobiWann posted:

32MB OF ESRAM posted:

ugh this is disgusting. i would rather watch a beheading

Skippy McPants posted:

Everything here is a gun unless it specifically indicates otherwise.