This past Tuesday I had the opportunity to tour the Sikorsky helicopter facility in Stratford, Connecticut. The company is locked in a fierce competition with Lockheed over who gets to make the next Marine One. I won't take a position (yet) on which contractor's chopper best suits the president, but I do admit the tour of Sikorsky's main factory was impressive. "Connecticut is a blue state, but this installation is all red," one of the reps told me. And I believe it. Enormous American flags hung from the hangar lofts while burly, bearded men donning American flag t-shirts refined blade spindles and assembled gearboxes. About 40 Stratford plant employees have served or are currently serving in the Middle East.
Seven other journalists and myself were then taken through a hangar where EH-60 Blackhawks were being worked on--some of them destined for Iraq, a few for Colombia. I asked one of the vice presidents about the Blackhawks in Iraq (the Army owns more than 1,500 of them). "We're constantly trying to improve their flaw tolerance," he told me, but added that almost every single Blackhawk that returns to its base comes back with at least one bullet hole in it.
We then entered the Executive Transport Center and stood less than 100 yards from the super-secret sector classified as "Yankee-White-Clearance." Beyond that the rest of the reporters and I speculated on what we saw. The Sikorsky officials wouldn't even acknowledge there was anything there, as if it were invisible. Said one, "I ask that you don't write about that." And so, in the interest of national security, I won't. (But I think I saw two pilots who looked a lot like Jan Michael Vincent and Ernest Borgnine.)
2 hours ago
4 comments:
Oh, C'mon Grady, it's obvious that for every no-neck Jack Germond out there you've got 10 pencil-necked Alan Colmeses!
Do you really think there are more vegetarian -- 'scuse me, VEGAN -- conservatives out there than liberals? Blue states are on the coasts -- think sushi. Red states produce the beef. C'mon, this ain't hard! If Mother Jones or the UTNE Reader had any sense, they'd create a diet book: Just being liberal melts the pounds away. Or maybe there's a genetic connection between the ability to produce fat cells and sound judgment.
As for Sikorsky, the founder, Igor, was part of the Czar's air force before the revolution forced him to leave -- another intellectual (and entrepreneurial) gift to America from totalitarian tyranny.
Oh, C'mon Grady, it's obvious that for every no-neck Jack Germond out there you've got 10 pencil-necked Alan Colmeses!
Do you really think there are more vegetarian -- 'scuse me, VEGAN -- conservatives out there than liberals? Blue states are on the coasts -- think sushi. Red states produce the beef. C'mon, this ain't hard! If Mother Jones or the UTNE Reader had any sense, they'd create a diet book: Just being liberal melts the pounds away. Or maybe there's a genetic connection between the ability to produce fat cells and sound judgment.
As for Sikorsky, the founder, Igor, was part of the Czar's air force before the revolution forced him to leave -- another intellectual (and entrepreneurial) gift to America from totalitarian tyranny.
I'm afraid I must retract part of my earlier posting because one of my assertions was just wrong, wrong wrong! (Oh, the ignominy! I'm afraid I've besmirched the Anonymous family name for generations!) The late Igor I. Sikorsky was NOT, as far as I can find anyway, a member of the Czar's air force (the Imperial Russian Air Service). He just supplied it with some of the most cutting-edge aircraft of that time.
Naturally, this humiliating error shook my confidence in the other assertions in my posting, but after an in-depth scrutiny I find each one solidly grounded in incontrovertible fact and incorrigible logic.
better than Airwolf ?
i doubt it
they did use a Sikorsky "in Airwolf"
it was called HX-1
and it was a pile of....
Airwolf Bell 222 beats the Sikorsky flat out.
better than Airwolf ¯\(ยบ_o)/¯
... bah.... lol
Airwolf Kicks ass (co'incidently a guys just Rebuilt airwolf for a helicopter museum in usa)
http://Airwolf.org and http://Airwolf.filefront.com
Airwolf is Elite
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