Denying Satisfaction

When a fellow Army pilot’s Apache helicopter took an RPG round and small arms fire over Afghanistan, punching a hole in the transmission, Jim Hardy says he wasn’t about to let the enemy have the satisfaction of stripping the chopper in a victory celebration. Hardy tested the “run-dry” ability of the Timken transmission to the limit by flying it back to his forward operating base, winning a medal in the process. He spoke with AVweb‘s Russ Niles at Heli-Expo in Orlando, Florida.