New Warbird for the Intrepid Museum
Fri Sep 05, 2008 9:47 pm
Some news from a couple weeks ago:
NEW YORK - When the USS Intrepid returns to its Hudson River pier later this year it will have a 1952-vintage Coast Guard rescue helicopter in its aircraft museum collection.
A derrick on Wednesday lifted the Korean War-era relic onto the ship's deck at Staten Island, where the WWII aircraft carrier is undergoing an 18-month overhaul.
Intrepid official Eric Boehm says the Sikorsky S-55 operated for years at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field as a Coast Guard rescue helicopter. "There's no way to know how many lives it saved," he says.
Later a crop-duster in Texas, it was recently acquired by the Intrepid from a defunct aircraft museum and refurbished. It is painted in original yellow Coast Guard colors.
Actually, the Coast Guard called them HO4S. In any case, it's really nice to see a warbird restored in a paint scheme it actually wore while in service and that is the case with HO4S number 1308. Sid Nanson, an S-55 researcher helped the museum trace the history of this one and they did a great job with the restoration. Sid sent along the following picture:
NEW YORK - When the USS Intrepid returns to its Hudson River pier later this year it will have a 1952-vintage Coast Guard rescue helicopter in its aircraft museum collection.
A derrick on Wednesday lifted the Korean War-era relic onto the ship's deck at Staten Island, where the WWII aircraft carrier is undergoing an 18-month overhaul.
Intrepid official Eric Boehm says the Sikorsky S-55 operated for years at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field as a Coast Guard rescue helicopter. "There's no way to know how many lives it saved," he says.
Later a crop-duster in Texas, it was recently acquired by the Intrepid from a defunct aircraft museum and refurbished. It is painted in original yellow Coast Guard colors.
Actually, the Coast Guard called them HO4S. In any case, it's really nice to see a warbird restored in a paint scheme it actually wore while in service and that is the case with HO4S number 1308. Sid Nanson, an S-55 researcher helped the museum trace the history of this one and they did a great job with the restoration. Sid sent along the following picture: