Comments by "vk2ig" (@vk2ig) on "Daring WW2 Helicopter Mission - Burma 1945" video.

  1. I wonder if Radar O'Reilly served in the last few months of WW2 in the Burma campaign - maybe that's where he tuned his ears?
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  2. A RAF helicopter crew would've had tea and scones before taking off again. :)
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  3. 30 gallons? These days there would be fuel for an alternate destination, plus reserve, go/no-go decision points, etc, etc. Our grandfathers and great grandfathers were certainly a different breed of people.
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  4. @Albert Strauss Not quite true. Many Americans volunteered - they weren't all drafted. (BTW, I'm not from the USA, but I do know this, having talked with US WW2 veterans.) You're shooting yourself in the foot (or in the hand in this case) when you make statements like that.
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  5. It was their own fault - make life difficult for your best and brightest and they will find somewhere else that better appreciates their abilities and talents.
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  6. Imagine if they'd sent a fighter escort ...
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  7.  @DoctorCreepy  Or the infamously mistranslated "knee mortar", but that would've been a compound fracture of the femur and the guy wouldn't have made it.
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  8.  @emgriffiths1861  Here in Australia during WW2 there were probably similar accident rates - there were many air training sites established around the country. Some of the guys who trained there (sadly no longer with us) said the worst time was that period after solo-ing where trainee pilots get a bit too confident and start augering in. Flying too slow and too low was a common cause.
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  9.  @fortawesome1974  If often wonder if people who make these sorts of comments are serious, or it's just their way of making a joke. I hope it's the latter - because if it's the former, then the human race is in more serious trouble than I thought.
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  10. That's why they couldn't take a radio - the mass of the balls!
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  11. Can you imagine the density altitude issues in that terrain in the tropics? And to think that more advanced and powerful helicopters used in Vietnam often had to make running take-offs because the couldn't hover because the density altitude was too high.
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  12. I don't blame them! :) "We're about to fly into some of the most difficult terrain in the world. I think I might have a cup of coffee before I go ... who knows, it might be my last."
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  13.  @MoveAhead101  About 10 years ago I heard a many-re-recorded audio track originally recorded on a "wire line recorder" (i.e. recorder used by US newspaper reporters) which is allegedly the only existing recording of a US submarine attacking Japanese ships in the Pacific.
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  14. Remarkable video, thank-you.
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