This was at Eglin AFB. Our LBR shared our expertise with the proving ground center, and did things no one else could do. The crew was Bobby Overturf I think! Capt Joe Gagnon and me, Harvey. As the pictures show the missile nose assy did not fit under the 43. So we had two flat beds parked, and we hovered up onto it. Shutting down the rotors was really" SHAKEY". I mean the trailers were all over the place. I asked CE to put4X4's under the ends and that helped a lot. We then loaded the nose cone, hooked up the launch panel, and away we went. The mission was over the gulf test range, and 10K ft. Also the airspeed was required to be as close to 0 kts as we could get. When we reached the drop zone I became the launch controller. We had to coordinate with the ground camera stations and when all was set I fired of the nose cone. When it leaves us it would fall about20 feet and then 3 tiny rocket motors would unscrew the nose cone. It would then deploy a chute. The motor section would just drop. Then just after launch I dropped 3 MK 5 smokes. The AF (navy) which had a boat squadron at Eglin would recover both items. We had an H-21 from Hulbert as chase with photogs aboard. They could not get near our altitude. When the rockets fired there was plenty of smoke. They started yelling over the radio that we had an explosion!! Of course when the smoke cleared that was not the case.  Big Joe Gagnon said let's see what a 10K autorotation is like!!  It doesn't take as long as a powered decent. We did several more of these missions.

COURTESY OF HARVEY MELTZER

"FREEDOM ISN'T FREE"

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"HELICOPTERS" - THE ONLY WAY TO FLY

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