The photos released last week of a Bell 412 towing a giant banner over the United Arab Emirates as part of a record-setting flight caught my attention. While helicopters do an admirable job of hauling sling loads from their bellies, they aren’t the ideal platforms for all types of towing.
I know this, in part, because my dad is enshrined in the U.S. Army’s record books as the first helicopter pilot ever to tow a glider. The idea back in the 1960s was to fill pilotless gliders with supplies and tow them with Hueys deep into the jungles of Vietnam, where they would be released by the pilot and crash land for the benefit of U.S. troops on the ground.
