CH-124 Sea King Historical Thread

[FSTO]

I see a weird Caddy, CPF, 280 mix...

Can you post the document ?

That is exactly what Fraser, St Laurent, Assiniboine, Skeena, and Margaree looked like.

 

[Baz]

I see a weird Caddy, CPF, 280 mix...

Can you post the document ?

I've never tried on here, let's see if it accepts it. I scanned it yesterday and rotated and cropped it last night. I was talking to the curator this morning about where the original might be to get a color scan.

As was stated by FSTO, given this is a 1961 drawing, it's pretty close to what the St Laurents looked like:

HMCS Laurent at Canada.ca

For those that are so inclined, the story of the St Laurent class, the fact that the Restigouces (all 7) were also supposed to be helo converted (but money got in the way), what the MacKenzies originally were supposed to be (which informed, eventually, the 280s), and how early the Navy realized that the carrier was probably not supportable in the long run (mid to late '50s), is interesting.

 

[Baz]

I went down this rabbit hole because I was trying to relocated the early '60s requirement for the Sea King. As always, when you open up an archival banker's box or two you see distractions. In this case, it was trhe story of how the decision to acquire the Sea King came about.

Luckily, when I spoke to Christine, the curator, she pointed out someone had already done the work:

It's much more of an academic treatment than a lot of the other works, with proper primary source references. As a matter of fact, the whole section on this in our archive is from his personnal records, as he unfortunately died in 2008 a couple of years after finishing this work.

 

[armrdsoul77]

Tow missions?

 

[Baz]

Tow missions?

Yeah... and remember, these types of presentations are normally put together with a good understanding customers wants and needs. We does ask the question "what was the RCN thinking?"

The hint may come from "Minesweeping and Tow Missions." From the article on Wikipedia about the Bay Class Minesweeper:

In an effort to free up funding in the early 1960s for other capital projects, the remaining ten were placed in reserve. Four more of the class, Resolute, Quinte, James Bay and Fortune were paid off in 1964 and sold to commercial interests.

As well, Sikorsky did end up in the airborne towing business:

US_Navy_071112-N-1465K-005_An_MH-53E_Sea_Dragon,from_Helicopter_Mine_Countermeasure_Squadron(HM)_15,_performs_mine_countermeasure_training_using_the_MK-105_sled.jpg

So, it is in the realm of the possible that Sikorsky picked up on Canada having to put aside it's minesweeping capabilities in order to fund it's other priorities (which at the time were the Sea King and the DDHs to carry it), and threw a bone to them. I may have seem some reference to airborne mine "sweeping" in the references I have reviewed, but I'm not sure. The illustration of it towing a ship is to put it in context to other's in the room (ie civvies and politicians); for all we know, it may have caused the eye roles we as operators all know when we see something we think is stupid.

To be clear, I'm not stating this as fact, just that it's a logical explanation as to why it shows up there.

 

[Good2Golf]

Tow missions?

View attachment 97078

In extremis towing can be done.

It can get spicy though…

 

[armrdsoul77]