Word: choppering
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...aircraft that flies like an airplane but takes off and lands like a chopper is about to make its combat debut in Iraq. It has been a long, strange trip: the V-22 has been 25 years in development, more than twice as long as the Apollo program that put men on the moon. V-22 crashes have claimed the lives of 30 men - 10 times the lunar program's toll - all before the plane has seen combat. The Pentagon has put $20 billion into the Osprey and expects to spend an additional $35 billion before the program is finished...
First, some history. Because Marines deploy aboard ships, the service's chiefs have always hungered for vertical lift - aircraft that could take off and land from small decks and fly far inland to drop off combat-ready troops. As the Marines' Vietnam-era CH-46 choppers became obsolete, commanders started to dream of an aircraft that would give them more options when considering an amphibious assault. The dreams intensified following the failed Desert One mission in 1980 to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran. In the course of the operation, three helicopters broke down, leading to an order to abort...
During my visit, she recounted the fateful afternoon in October, 1993 when she lost her home. "We were 20 people inside the room when the helicopter fell on our house. Militia first attacked [it from the] Bakara market. It came down and fell among our houses. When the chopper fell, a wounded American jumped away. He along with others ran from the back of our house to the front and stood near us. When he came to the front of our house, he stopped there and he killed several people. He killed one man there, there and there," she says...
...Iraqis in an effort to foster trust and glean tips on the insurgency. Rather, a pair of them died when their OH-58D Kiowa scout helicopter crashed 60 miles north of Baghdad - and six more were killed in roadside bombings as they rushed to the aid of the downed chopper crew. The Pentagon hasn't said whether the helicopter was hit by hostile fire, but the fact that rescuers rushing to help the pilots were ambushed suggests that insurgents downed the Kiowa in order to bait a trap for those rescuers...
...where they learned that a helicopter--which could never have stayed aloft in the tenuous air near the top of the mountain--would now be able to meet them and evacuate the wounded. Before long, the climbers heard the whap-whapping of blades and saw a dark green chopper struggling up to them. When it landed, the able-bodied loaded first Makalu Gao, then Weathers aboard, and the pilot flew off, dropping gratefully down to lower altitudes where there was thicker air for his blades to bite. With the helicopter gone, the most grievously injured climbers were at last...