Haven’t seen in it many years. I’ve a few questions that are coming up. Some hardcore historical, some dramatic.
The first one’s seemingly easy. I just don’t know this.
Why are the tops of the tips of the helicopter blades painted white? I’d think you’d want them invisible from above, not obvious.
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It’s not a question of stealth. Hueys aren’t at all stealthy. It’s so other pilots can tell where the rotors are when maneuvering around a formation.
When you have more than one helicopter in the air, you don’t want them invisible. You want the pilots to be able to see the other helicopter’s blades so that you don’t have friendly helicopters running into each other’s blades under poor visibility conditions.
My guess? To reduce decapitations.
You also generally didn’t want to literally broadcast your approaching air assault by blasting Wagner out of your helicopter’s PA system either. I’m not sure of the historical accuracy of Apocalypse Now.
A casual Google image search of “helicopter + Vietnam” produces pictures of helicopters painted with all kinds of stuff - blade tips painted white or yellow, various colored bands on the tail or fuselage, unit insignia, shark teeth.
The US had air superiority over the country. Definitely in the areas where helicopters would be conducting operations. So I don’t think being spotted from above was a serious risk.
Of what? Giraffes? The main rotor for a UH-1 probably sits a good 12 feet above the ground.
Let’s say you’re right. (I don’t know how high the rotor dish spins.) It wouldn’t be a problem if helicopters only landed on flat ground. Inclines, even subtle ones, can change things.
In addition, the dish doesn’t spin at a constant height. When adding collective, the blades rise. When flattening out the blade angle, the dish drops. It also doesn’t spin at a consistent angle relative to the ground. When the cyclic is pushed forward, the dish tilts forward, which is how a helicopter moves in other directions besides purely up and down.
All of those factors combined can easily turn 12 feet of clearance into a big hazard for people walking around.
You haven’t seen it in years and this is what you remember?
That said, I think the reason is so other pilots can see the rotor blades more easily, and thereby avoid colliding with them.
From Robert Mason’s excellent memoir of his experiences as a Huey pilot in Vietnam, Chickenhawk, he mentions how helicopters in an assault would often fly very close to each other. Occassionally overlapping rotor dishes. Landing Zones were small, and the more helicopters that could be crammed into the space, the faster the grunts could get out, and the faster the helicopters could get away from ground fire.
A bunch of helicopters flying in close formation would probably be a pretty good clue on its own, though. See the historical events preceding the Battle of Mogadishu and “Black Hawk Down” for an example.
I don’t think stealth was an important aspect of such large scale air assaults during the Vietnam War. Operational surprise, sure, but there’s nothing stealthy about a UH-1.
That’s why soldiers are trained to crouch whenever near a running helicopter. It probably isn’t necessary, but it’s good policy nonetheless.
I’m not sure you could even hear Wagner over that distinctive Huey whomp whomp sound. I think you’d hear the helis before the speakers.
I hope you don’t mind if I ask a question too.
My Apocalypse Now question is, in the attack on the river, what was the enemy supposed to be firing at the PBR? Bottle rockets? Was Coppola just being cheap or was it a legitimate tactic (like maybe masking the positions of the larger caliber weapons)?
Then again if someone were to cram a stack of Spinal Tap class Goes-to-Eleven amps into one of his Hueys, that would be Kilgore.
I think he’d need a dedicated generator on board. Or two!
WAG- movie version of tracer bullets?
I think it was just a way to underscore the craziness that was war in Vietnam.
They look like rockets to me. I can’t find any listing of small rockets used by the North. The Russians gave them stuff they captured in WWII.
Either that, or the Viet Cong had a Gyrojet regiment on that section of the river.
From IMDB:
I’d also guess that they’re meant to be tracer bullets, filmed in a time when safety procedures were lax. Here, one of them strikes a guy’s helmet - a couple of inches lower and it would have hit him in the face. I guess they could have painted the red tracers in afterwards, like the lasers in Star Wars.