Page 25 - Volume 16 Number 10

pteroContinues its MissionHail found a complete S-58 in Arizona, bought it and trailered it home for refurbishing. His business kept him hopping while the huge project sat in the hangar, so the lift venture was deferred. One day, he was examining the logs and found that his helicopter had seen service in I Corps during the Vietnam War, as Marine Squadron HMM-362’s number YL-37. He counted 54 patched bullet holes in her, and with some research, YL-37 was found to be the only UH-34 to make it through the war and return to the States intact. It was almost as if the aircraft was waiting for someone like Hail to find it. With the help of neighbors, veterans, and fellow UH-34 operators, YL-37 was brought back into original wartime colors and took to the air again.YL-37’s Personal HistoryBuilt as serial number 148783, a Navy-type HUS-1, at Sikorsky’s Bridgeport, Connecticut, plant in May 1961, YL-37’s career wasn’t without incident, of course. Flown by the “Ugly Angels” of HMM-362, it was in the thick of the action during the Vietnam struggle, both in country and ferrying supplies and personnel from ship-to-shore. It was once damaged so badly in a fire fight that it had to be airlifted out by a CH-54 Skycrane. After it was refitted with new rotor blades and engine parts and resumed flying, a V-C rocket attack blew its tailcone in half, which required depot-level repairs in Japan. Thus, at a time when the Bell Huey was taking over many of its missions, YL-37 was out of the country undergoing major surgery and, once repaired, it was no longer needed. Instead, it returned to California as a nearly new helicopter. The Marines flew it on into obsolescence and parked it in the Arizona boneyard until it was refurbished by J & H Helicopters in Tucson, from whom it was acquired by Gerald Hail.The design of the S-58 is relatively straightforward, but huge. The beefy Wright radial takes up the nose section, angled on a 34-degree slant to drive the rotor system through a shaft passing between the pilot and copilot on its way to the transmission behind the cockpit. Swing- open nose doors give free access to the engine, which is heavily shrouded for forced-air cooling through the screened inlets around the upper nose. A bellowing set of exhaust stacks is on the left side of the nose.The four hollow main rotor blades span 56 feet and provide a disc area of 2,462 square feet; they are nitrogen pressurized to warn of any cracks by a drop in the pressure. The tail rotor reaches 16 feet in the air, with a folding pylon to save space. A tailwheel is under the rear of the fuselage. Maingear span is 14 feet for UH-34D V-leg landing gear; initial versions of the S-58 carried a narrower “bent leg” gear that spanned 12 feet.The two-person cockpit is 10 feet above ground level, reached by scaling hand-and-toe holds on the sides of the fuselage. Sliding the cockpit window aft admits the athletic crewmember to the seat; as with most helicopters, the pilot-in-command sits on the right, even though full dual controls and instrumentation was provided. Bubble- pane windows allow the pilot to lean outboard to gain a better view of the area ahead and below. The huge, fully-articulated rotor hub is behind the pilots’ heads, the transmission enclosed with a louvered streamlining cowling. A relatively straight drive train leads aft to the tail-rotor gearbox; a fixed horizontal stabilizer is mounted on the leading edge of the tail pylon.The overall fuselage length is nearly 47 feet, and with everything turning, at least 66 feet will be needed for clearance. The 11 fuel cells in the lower fuselage hold a total of 266 gallons, 254 usable, managed asOCTOBER 2012TWIN & TURBINE • 23