First Quarter 2005

By Alexander P. J. Papadakos

    From January to April of 2005, the Gyrodyne Helicopter Historical Foundation (GHHF) has been working hard on retrieving archives for the future study of naval ship history. After leading one "archive removal trip" to Suisun Bay Reserve fleet, for Battleship Cove, we have come back with numerous parts varying from light fixtures to toilets to alarm bells to electrical panels to help restore the Battleship USS MASSACHUSETTS  (BB-59) and Destroyer USS JOSEPH P. KENNEDY JR. (DD-850).

    During these several months, we have been unloading and packaging up the parts gathered by the trips. What we do is place the archives in boxes, load them onto wood pallets, wrap them in shipping plastic, and eventually place them on the back of a tractor-trailer heading east. While unloading the GHHF trailer, we have found boxes of gauges, toilets, bells, ship pennants, office supplies, lights, fuses, and many other treasures our volunteers helped remove.

    One of the most important efforts the GHHF has recently completed is the obtainment of a complete china setting for the wardroom for the USS JOSEPH P. KENNEDY JR. (DD-850). Navy china comes in many different shapes, uses, designs, and manufacturers. The GHHF is very fortunate to have former Naval Officers acting as experts in what kind of China the KENNEDY would have used in the 1960's. Acting on their expertise, we found and received gold rimmed naval china with the United States Navy seal dating back from 1960. We received coffee cups & saucers, celery dishes, soup plates, consommé cups, dinner and bread plates all bearing the Unites States Navy emblem. This set was generously donated by several private groups. Further to complete some missing items, the GHHF worked with a private china dealer to complete the setting and he also donated original Navy table cloths for this effort on March 28, 2005. All these items will restore the Kennedy’s wardroom to its era in the 1960's.

    The GHHF has also been acquiring inert-ammunition 3"/50 cal shells from the Hawthorne Army Ammunition Depot (HWAD) for the restoration of the WWII Destroyer Escorts USS SLATER (DE-766)and USS STEWART (DE-238), as those seen at left. This effort to acquire these historic shells used on these Naval ships has taken over a year to coordinate with the Army's Command Staff. This effort culminated on March 30, 2005 when we gathered more than 130 of these rounds to be equally split between the two ships. This was a major success for the GHHF in preserving the history of these destroyer escorts. Of special note, while visiting Hawthorne, NV, we stopped by the Hawthorne Ordinance Museum located in downtown Hawthorne. As you know we support the Hawthorne Ordinance Museum with displays in the form of one of our helicopters, a QH-50D model. After being notified by a visitor that the letters on the QH-50 did not look like those QH-50s he had seen during his DASH service, we replaced the lettering with accurate letters cut to the original Gyrodyne specifications by Puliz Moving and Storage of Reno, Nevada. Puliz has been a key restoration partner as they produced the accurate lettering for last years QH-50C restorations at the Carolina Aviation Museum, New England Air Museum and of the tail restoration for the QH-50C on the USS JOSEPH P. KENNEDY JR. (DD-850).
As you can tell, between the packing of the Battleship Cove materials, obtainment of the Navy China and picking up 5000 lbs worth of shells for the destroyer escorts we’ve been pretty busy. Thank you for reading.

Final Half 2004

By Alexander P. J. Papadakos

    In the month of July, the Gyrodyne Historical Helicopter Foundation (GHHF) went up to Keyport, Washington. Keyport is located in the Puget Sound area. The GHHF went up to receive two MK-46 ASROCs and one MK-46 torpedo. The GHHF brought a trailer that was loaned to us by Puliz Moving and Storage.

    Once getting to our destination of Silverdale, not far from Keyport, we drove around to get situated. The next day we decided to go to the Boeing Factory in Seattle to have a tour of their facility. There are two ways to get to Seattle; and that is either the ferry or driving. The ferry will get you across to Seattle much faster than going around the bay. We, being from Reno, took the ferry. Being from Nevada, we have never been on a car carrying ferry before. Once making it to the out skirts of Seattle, we drove to the Boeing Factory and found out that the tours were full.

    As we left, we found the Seattle Museum of Flight. We decided that we should go see it. Wow, they had some very rare aircraft and an impressive collection. For example, they had a F4F Wildcat, P-40 Flying Tiger, a Japanese Zero, and many others. After walking a bit, we had lunch on the ramp on one of Seattle’s airports right next to the museum. After lunch, we looked at the original Boeing Factory attached to the museum. It was interesting to see the original tools used to create the old aircraft. All the tools used were attached to a belt which was attached to a bar that was connected to a single motor.

    We went to a restaurant called 13 Coins located in downtown Seattle. It served great food from casual to lobster and steak. I would eat there again any time.

    The next day, we went to meet our liaison with the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Keyport, WA. We met him at the Naval Undersea Museum which is next door to the Center. We went there also to donate two pieces of QH-50 command and control equipment. We met the curator and her assistant when dropping of the equipment. We were to drop off the equipment in their storage area. The had many impressive future exhibits in their back storage room. They reason for us to donating two pieces of command and control equipment was because they had a QH-50C. We had not seen their QH-50C before; and when looking around, we discovered that it was one of the only QH-50’s to have a heat strip on the blades. This strip was designed to make the QH-50 an all weather aircraft. If there were ice on the blades, then it would heat up and melt it off.

    After looking at their QH-50, the curator offered us to feel free and look around their museum. We took this offer and looked around at all their exhibits. They had an impressive collection of torpedoes on display and many representations of what people are doing under water today. I would say go and see it because there is so much history about underwater explorations. For example, they had a walk in model of a nuclear submarine. They also had examples of the first water weapons used in the Revolutionary War up to current uses.

    The next day, we went to the base’s front gate and got our passes and followed our liaison onto the base and were generously helped by him and many other contractors. They braced and blocked the two MK-46 ASROCs and the one MK-46. Once being finished, we thanked everyone and filled out paper work and headed back to Reno.

    In the month of July, we have also been taking parts to an auto body shop for re-painting. We have taken in two sets of landing gears, a pie plate (the top of the QH-50), a fuel tank, and other numerous parts. By getting one of the landing gear sets we had to take them off the GHHF’s current helicopter project. We had to lift the helicopter to take off the tank first before we could take off the landing gears. We had to pound the tank because it had been on there many years. We were lucky that Aviation Classics was nice enough to loan their forklift to us. This fuel tank didn’t belong to this QH-50 originally.


Thanks for reading and supporting us.


Sincerely,

Gyrodyne Historical Helicopter Foundation

 

June-July 2004

By Alexander P. J. Papadakos

    The Gyrodyne Historical Foundation, GHHF, educates people about the only unmanned deployed VTOL UAV in the world, the QH-50. We are also trying to complete QH-50’s to be in museums. For more information go to www.gyrodynehelicopters.com .

    Like many other organizations, the GHHF is producing a newsletter about its current projects. This newsletter is being written by Alexander Papadakos, assistant curator of the GHHF.

    In June, GHHF has been very busy finding out the history of aircraft and restoring various parts of the QH-50.  Reels of micro-film were finally read at the downtown library. These micro-films contained the histories of all QH-50 known to the Navy. None of us knew how to use the micro-film reader, but a very nice library employee showed us. Once you know how to use the machine, it’s pretty easy to operate.

    If you give us a serial number of a QH-50, we can trace its history for you. Because of this micro-film, we now know each aircraft’s model, time, location date to date, and when it was commissioned or destroyed. This was very tedious work to look at but interesting.

    Also in June, the GHHF has been painting individual parts of a QH-50. It has been very hard finding vintage colors of the times for the port and starboard sides of the QH-50. We’ve gotten very close, but just barely a shade off.  We are continuously repainting to make the parts look new.

    The GHHF is trying to restore another QH-50 and is trying to acquire parts for the aircraft. We have ordered parts and been given parts. We have had to look in the old manuals for the parts and part number.

We will have more for you in our next month’s newsletter with a trip to Keyport, Washington where we will be picking up ASROC torpedoes for one of our DASH museums; the USS JOSEPH P. KENNEDY JR (DD-850).

Helicopter Historical Foundation
P.O. Box 3838, Reno, Nevada USA 89505

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