I remember the Helo accident very well I was friends wit most of the the guys in HU-1.If I remember right one of the tiedowns was left on causing the Helo to flip over.I still dream about it.V-3 Div 1963-1967
Thanks for that information! As I said I was just aft of the F4 and under the radome of my A6, and did not see the acciden. I always assumed it was power failure.
I remember Dave, he was killed shortly after I joined VF-213. I was an AQ (aviation fire control tech.) I worked on the APX-76 (IFF gear) I worked with a civilian tech. rep. by the name of Jim Hutcheson from Hazeltine Electronics out of New York State.
I was in the squadron for its 66-67 cruises. I also assisted a guy by the name of Larry Johnson, who went by the name of "LJ the DJ" on KTTY radio for a while.
I've been looking for my best friend at that time; Wayne E. Heffron. As I recall he was from New York State, but I cannot find him anywhere... If you should find any information about Wayne, I would appreciate your passing my e-mail address on to him.
Sincerely, J.C.Howery AQF3, VF-213 (World Famous Fighting Black Lions)
Hello Ray, This is amazing. I was running the crew on cat four the day that chopper went down. My nose tow guy and I were leaning on the starboard wing on that F4 trying not to get blown back into the jbd. The prop wash from both chopper's was a real storm from up front. As soon as the very front chopper lifted I took a glance forward and saw the nearest chopper try to lift but all of a sudden his rotor nicked the deck and we all just froze for a second. It seems that in that second the plane captain took a piece of rotor in the chest and fell into the foot well. Aluminum pieces and what seems like steel pool balls were flying everywhere. Number four jbd took something that punched holes in it, the F4 loaded on cat four took some hits and the pilots were trying to scramble out of their cockpits, I heard this crashing sound and glanced forward in time to see the chopper slide over the side. Talk about chaos. I looked back under the belly of the F4 and the belly tank was spewing what I thought was jp-4, later I asked myself, " that tank was split open, shouldn,t it have exploded"? It was at this point when I was staring at this tank that realized that whatever hit this tank had to take a path between my legs!!
