Going from a cruise speed to a hover would take time. Maintaining altitude would require a lot of work. I can not recall in my career ever being requested to do this. I flew H-46s for a while, with the twin rotors it could slow down pretty fast.
We would do what was called a “button hook’ fly above tree top at max speed, abeam the LZ, dump the collective, pitch up steeply, full rudder into the turn. The helo would pitch up steeply, the nose would rapidly come around, push the nose down on a very short final.
It was amazing.
“We would do what was called a “button hook’ fly above tree top at max speed, abeam the LZ, dump the collective, pitch up steeply, full rudder into the turn. The helo would pitch up steeply, the nose would rapidly come around, push the nose down on a very short final.
It was amazing.”
Thank you for the important reply! I have actually seen this done so can visualize it! But I do not remember if the maneuver also caused the whole craft to rise in elevation as a residual flight characteristic?
What I am getting at is could it be possible that at the last minute they did try to perform a maneuver like this but it rose up into the plane as a residual of that last ditch maneuver as a natural side effect?
I saw a Sea knight ch46a collide with an hus-1 (uh-34) at the former Mile Square OLF in May 1966. 3 fatalities all USMC. Helos don’t seem very forgiving of carelessness..