Army Aviation: "Flying Soldiers" 1959 US Army; VZ-2 Tiltwing, OV-1 Mohawk, CV-2/C-7 Caribou, UH-1; The Big Picture TV-426 (Patreon)

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'"Flying Soldiers" is a documentary film which dramatically presents the story of Army aviation. Viewers will see everything from a foot soldier to an Honest John missile. A simulated battle is staged for the cameras in which fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters rush vitally needed soldiers to the front. Also seen in this episode is the latest in Army aircraft -- the revolutionary "Tilt-Wing," the Caribou, and the Mohawk. Today Army aviation is more than a new weapon. It multiplies the effectiveness of every new weapon we have now, and those we will have in the future. As pointed out in this THE BIG PICTURE release, today's Army must take to the air, which has no mud holes or traffic jams, no road blocks or narrow bridges. This is not the air 20,000 feet up or even 2,000 feet, but the air just above the treetops -- or better yet, in between the trees.'

Originally a public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_Aviation_Branch

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

The United States Army Aviation Branch is the administrative organization within the United States Army responsible for doctrine, manning and configuration for all army aviation units.

After the United States Army Air Corps grew into the Army Air Forces and split into the new service, the United States Air Force, the Army was left with its sole fixed-wing aviation units flying Taylorcraft L-2 Grasshopper observation planes for artillery units. The Army would develop a new concept of aviation using the helicopter that would show promise during the Korean War and would revolutionize warfare during the Vietnam War...

United States military aviation began in 1907 with the Army’s acquisition of its first heavier-than-air aircraft, an airplane built to Army specifications by the Wright brothers. During World War I, the Air Service's aircraft strength grew from a few dozen to more than 11,000 planes, and the number of aviation personnel came to total more than 190,000...

When the United States Air Force was established as a separate service in 1947, the Army developed its light planes and rotary wing aircraft to support its ground operations. The Korean War and Vietnam War proved the growing capabilities of these aviation assets to perform a variety of missions not covered by the Air Force.

The Korean War provided new challenges and opportunities for Army Aviation. Organic Army Aviation had acquired its first helicopters, thirteen Bell H-13 Sioux, in 1947, shortly before the U.S. Air Force became independent of the Army. In Korea, the Army employed the Cessna O-1 Bird Dog and other improved fixed wing planes, but also helicopters...

The first armed helicopter company was activated in Okinawa in 1962. It was deployed to Thailand and then to Vietnam, where it flew escort for lift helicopters. The Department of Defense did not abolish mission restrictions on the Army's rotary-wing aircraft, thereby technically authorizing the Army to arm helicopters until 1966. The "Howze Board," or "Tactical Mobility Requirements Board," was established in 1962 to develop and test the concept of air mobility...

Both Army Aviation and the helicopter came of age during the conflict in Southeast Asia. The most widely used helicopter, the Bell UH-1 Iroquois, or Huey, began to arrive in Vietnam in significant numbers in 1964. Before the end of the conflict, more than 5,000 of these versatile aircraft were introduced into Southeast Asia. They were used for medical evacuation, command and control, air assault; personnel and materiel transport; and gunships. The AH-1 Cobra arrived in 1967 to partially replace the Huey in its gun ship capacity. Other important helicopters in Vietnam included the Boeing CH-47 Chinook, the Hughes OH-6 Cayuse, the Bell OH-58 Kiowa, and the Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe...

Under the Johnson-McConnell agreement of 1966, the Army agreed to limit its fixed-wing aviation role to administrative mission support (light unarmed aircraft which cannot operate from forward positions).

...New or radically modified aircraft were adopted from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s. These included the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk, Boeing AH-64 Apache, D-model of the CH-47 Chinook, and OH-58D version of the Kiowa...