from the Salvador Allende was ever found. He was later located and recovered by a merchant vessel that participated in the search. In his book “Heart of the Storm”, Ed
Fleming described how the coordination between the helicopters and C-130s made the refueling evolutions possible and how challenging the rescue mission was. Fleming also mentioned that the rescue of Alexander Taranov occurred just before Christmas in 1994, and how the crews in- volved were grateful to have returned Taranov home to be with his family for the holidays. Fleming remarked in his book how he still receives a Christmas card each year from Taranov, as a thank you and a reminder that he has had an- other year with his family in no small part because of the heroic actions of the res- cuers. For their extraordinary efforts the crews of Jolly 14 and Jolly 08 received the American Helicopter Society’s 1995 Cap- tain William J. Kossler Award for “the year’s greatest achievement in practical application or operation of rotary wing- aircraft.” However, the story behind the rescue of Alexander Taranov actually starts years before December of 1994 at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where a group of Air Force test pilots and engi- neers would lay the ground work that would make this rescue possible. In 1965, the United States was heavily involved in the war in Southeast Asia. By
this time helicopters had become a main- stay for military operations, especially for rescuing downed aviators. The United States Air Force Air Rescue and Recovery Service (ARRS) specialized in this task. One major problem for the ARRS pilots and crews was limited range and on scene
time dictated by the finite amount of fuel that could be carried onboard helicopters in the 1960s. The Air Force, specifically the Helicopter Systems Procurement Of- fice at Wright Patterson Air Force base in Ohio, initially tried to fix this problem by making the fuel tanks larger. However, they quickly realized that enlarging the fuel tanks would not solve the problem. Major Harry Dunn was working in the H- 3 Systems Program Office at the time and had recently been involved with a program evaluating icing on the H-3. The test in- volved flying an Air Force H-3 behind a C-130 while spraying water off of the C- 130s cargo ramp onto the H-3. Based on this testing, Dunn believed that it might be possible to fly a helicopter behind a C- 130 and conduct air-to-air refueling. This technique was routinely used on fix-wing platforms but had never been used suc- cessfully with helicopters. Major Dunn consulted some of his colleagues about whether or not this procedure would work. Many of them thought that it would be nearly impossible for a helicopter at high gross weight to keep up with a C-130 even
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