End nears for CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter - Marine Corps News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Marine Corps Times

End nears for CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter

OCEANSIDE, Calif. — On any given day, dozens of helicopters and jets take off from Miramar Marine Corps Air Station — some for local training flights, others for assignments overseas or other stateside bases.

But the quiet departure in late July of two CH-46E helicopters, affectionately known around the Corps as “Phrogs” for their frog-like silhouette, marked yet another retirement of the Vietnam-era helo. Aircrews with the “Grayhawks” of Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 161 flew these Sea Knights to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, outside Tucson, Ariz., home to the military’s enormous aircraft complex known as “The Boneyard.”

The helicopters landed with no fanfare, no ceremony, “no general there to say, ‘Hey, these airplanes have flown a good life,’ ” said Capt. William Murphy. “The ceremony is us getting to fly it there.”

Murphy has logged some 1,500 hours in the Sea Knight during his 10 years in the Corps, many during multiple tours in Iraq. His squadron, which received its first CH-46A in 1966, will eventually transition to the MV-22 Osprey tiltrotor aircraft.

These two Phrogs join a dozen other CH-46Es already in the base’s famous collection of 4,400 military jets, bombers, reconnaissance planes and helicopters, including two other Grayhawk Sea Knights delivered in June.

“It’s not every day we see the CH-46E,” said Terry Vanden-Heuvel, business affairs liaison with Davis-Monthan’s Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, which runs the famous storage facility and maintains the aircraft there.

The first CH-46E Sea Knight to be retired and stored in the Boneyard, a Sea Knight from HMM-365, arrived Nov. 2, 2005, 41 years after the first CH-46 — the “A” model — entered the fleet. Six others followed in 2006. Two arrived last year. So far in 2008, the Boneyard has welcomed five Sea Knights.

The collection grows

All told, the collection at Davis-Monthan includes two-dozen CH-46Es along with 14 of the Marine Corps’ earlier ”D” model. Several more Sea Knights are expected to arrive before year’s end.

“It’s pretty steady right now. We are not getting rid of any of them,” said Tim Horn, who directs the Naval Inventory Control Point team that oversees the 1,750 naval aircraft parked in the desert.

The Corps is transitioning two Sea Knight squadrons annually to the Osprey, said Maj. Eric Dent, a headquarters spokesman at the Pentagon. That’s about two dozen helicopters a year. While many are redistributed to other units, the number of retired airframes is slowly growing.

So far, 27 “E” models have been retired or stricken from service, according to Naval Air Systems Command. They include a handful of Sea Knights at Fleet Readiness Center-East, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, N.C.

The retired helicopters are owned by Naval Inventory Control Point, and “a number of parts are removed for continued support of the remaining aircraft,” said Rob Koon, a NavAir spokesman at Patuxent River, Md. The preserved helicopters are stored for future needs, if required.

Five retired helicopters are still serving the military in a way, Dent said.

Two are being used as trainers: one at the Navy’s Fire Fighting School in Pensacola, Fla., the other for fire suppression at China Lake Naval Air Warfare Center, Calif. A third was sent to General Electric to help test infrared suppression. Two others are on display in North Carolina: one at New River Marine Corps Air Station’s front gate, the other at Carolinas Aviation Museum in Charlotte.

Bittersweet delivery

For the Phrog community, these days are a mix of operational highs — flying combat missions and supporting ground troops in Iraq and Afghanistan — and the bittersweet task of taking a helicopter to what might be its final resting place.

“They’ve been a workhorse,” Horn said.

And saying goodbye can be personal.

“You taxi in, and you can’t believe you’re dropping it off,” Murphy said. “You’re never going to pick it up again.”

At the Boneyard, aircrews hand over the helicopter along with its maintenance cards and logbook, which is kept in a depository at Davis-Monthan.

All but one of the Sea Knights there are in “type 2000” storage, a category of aircraft prepared for storage relatively intact, “unless authorized to pull parts,” Vanden-Heuvel said. In other words, the helicopters can be cannibalized if necessary.

“We’re reusing all the critical parts of it to support the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Horn said. That means engines, transmissions, rotor heads and blades. It takes several days to strip one of these birds. Each part is noted on component cards to make it easier to track should the need arise later. The fuselage then is sealed, though parts could be removed for priority requests.

Some go to the Boneyard’s “flush farm,” where fluids are replaced with preservation oils, said Horn, a retired Air Force KC-135 mechanic. Workers cover the aircraft with a removable silicone-based sealant.

“By sealing up the aircraft, it keeps the inside temperatures of the cockpits within 20 degrees of the ambient temperature,” he noted. “Without it, cockpit temperatures would soar up to 400 degrees and cook the avionics inside the aircraft.”

Aircraft in the war-reserve section “can’t be touched,” Horn said.

The lone Phrog in “type 4000” storage, retired by HMM-164 two years ago, has one more mission remaining: museum duty.