Sailors assigned to the Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 41 “Seahawks” celebrated 170,000 operational flight hours without a Class A mishap Jan. 8.
A Class A mishap is defined as an incident with a total cost of more than $1 million, destroyed aircraft, fatal injury or total disability. HSM-41, which began service as Helicopter Anti-Submarine Light 41 in 1983, has accumulated the hours over the course of the fleet replacement squadron’s lifetime.
HSM-41’s Sailor of the Year, Aircrew Survival Equipmentman 1st Class Cole Lindsay , spoke about the significance of the milestone.
“There are four mishap classes with Class A being the most severe you could have,” Lindsay said. “It’s amazing that we’ve flown that exorbitant amount of hours without any serious problems for the amount of time that we have been commissioned. Not many commands get that milestone.”
Sailors at HSM-41 work on the MH-60R, an anti-ship, anti-submarine helicopter, keeping them flight ready for any mission they may be tasked with.
“We train all of the replacement pilots and aircrewman for the fleet and then we send them out to their corresponding squadrons,” said Lindsay. “We also do search-and-rescue. If there is a ship in distress, somebody in the water, a canyon rescue, or overland rescue, we will go and pick them up.”
Lindsay said that his squadron places a huge emphasis on safety and attention to detail, and identified training as a top priority for the squadron’s future success.
“It takes everyone here training our junior personnel to do their jobs to keep heading in the right direction,” Lindsay said. “As long as we train our replacements the right way, we are going to be successful.”
Aviation Machinist’s Mate Airman Apprentice Adriane Curran takes pride in the work that she does contributing to the safe flight operations of her squadron.
“I deal directly with all the moving parts of the helicopter that make it fly so it’s really incredible to me,” said Curran. “It really makes me proud and I hope that I can contribute to the next 10,000 mishap free flight hours.”
[mappress] Naval Today Staff, January 9, 2013; Image: US Navy