Had to go in one as a passenger on one of those from Cam Ranh Bay out to a carrier for temporary duty. Crew chief told us that "hover" meant standing still, give or take 5 feet. He gave us each some saltine crackers to chew to keep from getting air sick. It's been 52 years and my ears still ring.

From one veteran to another, I salute you!. I do hope you do get your project done. Peace be with you.

Great project good luck with it. Guy not to far from me has a complete Huey as a piece of yard art. Thank you for your service

As an A&P mechanic I would have liked to help with that restoration. HAND SALUTE

Sir..Thank you for your service to Our country, and bringing back History of a time that is trying to be washed away. God's Speed.

And thank you for your service. God bless you and Gerald's family. That was a long time ago

I truly hope that people come together and help him put this together it might be missing a lot of parts but this is his life in his memory it's more than just an old helicopter it's like a part of your soul

Thank you for your service

I’d love to be able to stop and turn some wrenches with this gentleman and listen to him tell stories while we work.

I just hope that it ends up in a museum that is a little more careful about their collection than the Smithsonian. It may be because their collection is so vast but the Smithsonian has complete aircraft, disassembled and stored in crates that have never seen the light of day. And they constantly lose parts of aircraft. The National Museum of The US Air Force has quite a few partial airframes that the Smithsonian gave them that are missing wings or other components that are sitting in some warehouse, mislabeled or just misplaced.

I vividly remember parching holes on 34's onboard ship in '69 off DaNang, Vietnam. Every night we flight deck airedales would help the Marine crews patch holes. Tin snipes, a sheet of aluminum, pop rivets, a drill, and green paint. Nothing hi-tech here. We had the last embarked Squadron of 34's ever. The next cruise we had 46's and 53's. USS Okinawa LPH-3. I was a Aviation Boatswain Mate/Fuels. After flight deck refueling station.

I was stationed at Camp Pendleton in the early `70`s and the Huey`s and Cobras had a lot of bullet hole patches.

One of my favorite helicopters good luck with your work and have fun doing it ,thanks for your service ..

Trying to bring his 'war story,' to life ! Good luck !

I would very much like to see this piece of history!!!!!!

You are a brave man Sir

love this man

Amen 🙏. I stand with you! Freedom America 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

All aircraft has a story tell. Especially those winged warriors . They have a very special story to tell just look at them and touch these combat " Ladies of the Sky" . You can feel the the spirit that is with in them . Thank you .

i'm a bit of an old army relic that still remembers GERMANY , the men (i served with) ,& the aircraft ( 685.1) i worked on.it was a great time with good people (1959-1962)

I've seen some of those bullet hole patches. When I was in the Army back in the 80s and early 90s they had a few Hueys that had them from being shot up during the Vietnam war. There is also one on display in the Udvar-Hazy Smithsonian Air and Space museum that was patched up from taking fire.

Sikorsky Aircraft. Marine rotary wing aviation. Medivac rescue operations. CH 34 Choctaw. Radial piston engine Wright Cyclone 1820. Engine also powering Boeing B- 17. The drive shaft extending between pilots to rotor gear box clutch mechanism to allow engine start operations unloaded. Also driving tail anti torque rotor. Cyclical controls of rotary wings to allow for lift pitch and travel incidence hub. Hands full in normal flight regimes. Vastly more involved in taking ground fire low level operations. “ cut me a HUS “ This aircraft should be restored to service conditions to serve as a visual reminder to all Americans of the valiant service of our medical evacuations operations personnel. Under intense and accurate fire and in immense and immediate danger to themselves they flew to assist their fellow downed airmen. 🇺🇸 He ain’t heavy,, he’s my brother 🇺🇸

Well Done Sir!

We have a few down in Shafter airport at the Minter Air Museum .

ICON ! ! !

Rest in peace, Robert.

Semper Fi.

Thank you sir

Oh great, nobody will see it again locked up in the Smithsonian basement....

Semper Fi, Marine!

Check out "Humphrey," a similar helicopter, for the number of bullet holes in the UK, a Falklands veteran. And in the Air Force Museum, "Patches," a C-123, is famous for the 500 hits it took one mission, gaining seven purple hearts for those aboard. I flew in that one.

Glad to hear the Smithsonian is stepping up and will take on this project when the time comes.

How is he doing with the restoration, does anybody know?

P.O.W. M.I.A. Never Forget

Excellent story!!

Rock on my brother

As an Army airman, we used to fly over to the Marine base at Da Nang and see these left over Korean war helicopters the Marines were flying while we had UH1 D's. Wondered if the Pentagon or Navy was just mad at the Marines. In retrospect I believe some of these had been retrofitted with turbine engines as the originals had gasoline radials I believe.

We had a wrecker in Phi Bai that had 42 hearts on the door (bullet holes) 67-68

Flew on one in the Philippines on an exercise in the early 60s with the 173rd to deter the Huks. I always thought it was a big guppy looking chopper. Got the job done though. Good luck getting it done.

SALUTE AND YES REGUARDLESS !!!

I would love to help him with his project and also learn more about the history of the helicopter

I had the privilege of working on one that had a ground mishap at McComb Airport while enroute to an airshow or museum. It was taxiing in for fuel and got too close to the hangar door rail support I-beam near the fueling area. It was deemed unairworthy(obviously) and because of my experience with that vintage of Sikorsky, I did a lot of the work of disassembly to prep it for packaging on a lowboy specialty transport. Great big radial engine was really neat.

Very Good!!

GOOD VIDEO!!!!!

I’m wondering what the serial number is and what the logbooks say about the places this a/c has been and battle damage it endured.

The marine corps ch-53s i served with had bullets holes from Vietnam all over them and i worked on them in a hangar that had bullet holes from Imperial Japanese Navy attacks planes from WW2 . Some of the helicopters actually went to war in OIF Iraq around early 2000s.

Rode in the “egg beaters” a few times. They were from the ‘50’s and so old the crew chief kept the side door open. If we were over water we had Mae West on. No questions, if the chief said jump, you did. These old birds burnt like flairs. Where the paint was chipped, you could see it was 1/4” thick. It had a radial engine in the nose.

Was that a blue 66-67 chevelle sittin to the right peekin out from some parts?

Being from Owasso and knowing Gerald and the dozer work he did. I used to go to his property and shoot. The volunteer from St Francis was murdered and as Gerald was locking up for the day, he was discovered and murdered as well. All for 1 damn car.

had a few landings in a 34......L 3/4 Vietnam Jan66-Jul67 extended six months in-country to stay with them

Semper Fi

Same helicopter used in the TV show Riptide?

That would have been an early Vietnam-era aircraft, probably I'm guessing no later than '65 before being replaced by a Bell UH-1 Iroquois (Huey) If I'm not mistaken, those Sikorsky's ~ or @ least the early ones ~ were piston-driven engines; very loud.

Get this guy some power tools !!

I watched the Marine Corps's last operational 34 land at New River Air Station. They towed it out to the front gate and put it up on concrete pedestals. Wonder if its still there?

Should be a mil number on it somewhere , might be able to find out just where its been.

Well done UK forces

The real truth is looking at the bottom of the airframe. I'll bet you see many more bullet holes and holes from cross bow bolts. My dad was a crew chief on one of these for two tours or 36 months. He told me that they used to take their flak jackets of and sit on them because of the amount of ground fire they took.

Would make for an interesting camper

What kind of car was in his garage?

Where’s the whole picture?????

I'm late to this. Is it an H-34?

🇺🇸

How the heck did he get a CH34?!?

🙂🤔👀👍💻👍

Could they have showed any less of the heli?

WTF are these subtitles

Not many of those old birds around Much less intact Do us proud Smithsonian

Unfortunately, I have to agree with the notion that the Smithsonian will hide this one away, but not because they're keeping it a secret. Rather, they already have one on display at their hangar at Dulles, and probably don't need to display a second one.

So many bullet holes 😮

This video is 3 years old yet every comment is withing the last few days. Thanks KZfaq, the guys probably dead now.

Well I enjoy the idea but you can sure tell he did not learn any hand tool handling skills "in the Marines"

he hasnt brought it back to life its a hulk in a shed. Typical american exageration of thier accomplishments

Not much to see

That’s racist

By himself? He will be dead by the time he completes this. This is a tar baby.