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July 26, 2008
Black Hawk talk
Former Sikorsky engineer Ray D. Leoni addresses the audience at the National Helicopter Museum. Photo: Ken Collinge.
The 25th anniversary season of the National Helicopter Museum was inaugurated with a May 6 talk titled “Black Hawk — Creating a World Class Helicopter” by Ray D. Leoni.
Leoni is the former Sikorsky Aircraft design engineer who is a co-holder of the Black Hawk design patent and author of the book “Black Hawk: The Story of a World Class Helicopter.”
Leoni’s talk covered the history of the Sikorsky company and its helicopters leading up to the Black Hawk, the details of the conception, competition with other manufacturers, selection of the aircraft and its development, production and world-wide success.
Leoni recounted an interesting incident when a prototype Black Hawk made an emergency landing in a pine forest with its rotor blades chopping their way through the trees to the ground. The Army evaluators were very impressed when the helicopter lifted itself out of the forest and flew back to its base after surrounding trees were cleared and only the rotor blades required replacing. This incident gave early proof of the helicopter’s superior design and rugged construction that has been verified in combat and hundreds of other situations.
Posted by Bustraan on July 26, 2008 6:52 PM
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