Marc Liebman's Blog, page 28

Thomas Barclay and America’s Longest Standing Treaty

On June 26th, 1786, Sidi Mohammed ibn Abdullah (Mohammed III), the Sultan of Morocco, was the first to sign the 25 article Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the United States of America and Morocco. The man who negotiated the treaty, Thomas Barclay, signed for the U.S. on July 15th, 1786.

Two future presidents – John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – who were in paris at the time signed for the U.S. in January 1787 and the 50-year treaty was ratified by Congress on July 15th, 1787.

In 1837, the treaty officially expired and was redone as originally written and still remains in force today, 234 years later. The treaty focuses primarily on how trade between the two countries will be handled, jurisdiction on how disputes are to be resolved and guidance on what procedures will be followed in case both sides are on opposites of a war.

For the record, this treaty survived the two Barbary Pirates War that began in 1801 after the U.S. decided that as a country, we would no longer pay tribute to the pirates operating from the North African coast of modern Algeria, Libya and Tunisia.

The Moroccan Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation was negotiated largely by Irish borne Thomas Barclay who was a successful trader. He also spoke fluent Arabic and wrote the actual document that is in both Arabic and English.

Barclay was the son of a wealthy Irish merchant and settled first in Boston and then moved to Philadelphia. He made his own fortune running what we would call an import export business. After the Revolutionary War, President Washington sent him to Europe to negotiate – read reduce as much as possible – the country’s debts to those who loaned the Continental Congress money.

In 1786, a frustrated Mohammed III ordered a U.S. merchant ship to be seized by one of his ships and brought to Marrakesh. Why? Morocco was a very early supporter of the revolution and wanted a treaty with the new country. Despite letters to the U.S. Congress and president, Mohammed III did not receive a response so he arranged for the ship to be taken. Barclay was dispatched to Morocco in June 1786 and the treaty soon followed.

Alarmed by the activities of the pirates operating from bases in Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli, President Washington ordered Barclay to go to Algiers and negotiate the release of our ships as well as treaties that would end the piracy. He went to Lisbon to get gold and silver coins and died from some sort of infection within a few days of arriving in Portugal. For some reason, his gravestone says he died in a duel (See image).

Barclay’s importance to U.S. diplomatic history cannot be overestimated because for two and a half centuries, his work has stood the test of time. That’s more than can be said of many treaties negotiated by the United States of America.

Image of Thomas Barclay’s grave stone courtesy of Wikipedia

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George Washington’s Spymaster

Most Americans know about the traitor Benedict Arnold and even his contact Major John Andre, the head of the British Army’s intelligence service in North America. Few of those reading this post probably have ever heard of Major Benjamin Tallmadge, General George Washington’s spymaster much less the Culper Spy Ring which uncovered the plot to turn West Point over to the British.

Washington is known for being a leader, soldier and a politician, but he also understood the value of intelligence. He was adept at knowing how to acquire the information and use the intelligence effectively to either deceive the British or change his battlefield plans.

The reality Washington and the Continental Army faced was that the British Army was more experienced, better funded, equipped and trained. Washington’s job was as much avoiding a disastrous defeat as it was winning battles. As long as the Continental Army was in the field, the British had to “honor the threat.”

General Sir Henry Clinton, the British commander in North America had his headquarters in New York City and although he had a large force in New York, Charleston and Savannah, his options were limited. They were made more so by an intelligence organization that would make the OSS and the CIA proud.

In 1778, New Yorker Benjamin Tallmadge, an officer in the Second Continental Dragoons, was tasked by Washington to set up an intelligence gathering operation. He arranged for Abraham Woodhull to be released from a British prison where he was doing time for “illegal trading.” Later, Robert Townsend would join the New York based operation.

The ring was named after a Culpeper County in Virginia. Woodhull was known as Samuel Culper, Sr. and Townsend was known as Samuel Culper, Jr. while Tallmadge was referred to as John Bolton. Agents and individuals were never referred to by name, but by a number. Washington was Agent 711.

The Culper Ring used all sorts of modern techniques such as dead drops, code names for individuals, codes and ciphers. One member, Anna Strong, would signal that she had information to pass on by the way she hung the laundry to dry in her yard.

Its cipher book had a vocabulary that assigned three-digit numbers to each word. The code enabled them to send messages that were undecipherable to anyone without the code book. Tallmadge could change the cipher without reprinting the books by simply telling the holders of the book what order the numbers for each word had to be in, e.g. “majesty” in the main version was 793. Changing the order to 397 again makes the code hard to decipher!

The Culper Ring helped Washington warn the French that the British were going to try to attack their Army right after it landed. The French were ready and the British attack failed. Washington often used the Culper Ring to plant disinformation about his army’s movements, strengths and intentions.

Tallmadge’s, and others’ efforts to gather intelligence about the British Army and Royal Navy was a closely guarded secret and not revealed until 1790. To this day, the identities of some of its members are unknown and probably lost to history.

The effectiveness of the Tallmadge’s ring was best summed up by a British intelligence officer after the war, when he said, “Washington didn’t out fight the British Army, he out-spied us.”

Image of page 2 from the Culper Code book courtesy of the Mount Vernon Project.

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Thank Our Founding Fathers for a Decimal System of Currency

When the war broke out in 1775, the – the future United States of America – were still using the English system of currency based on pound, shillings and pence. However, within the colonies, other currencies – Spanish dollars, French livres and Dutch Guilders – were all used in commercial transactions. A quick review of the units of currency will help provide some context so you can understand what our Founding Fathers dealt with on a daily basis.

The farthing was the smallest unit of English currency and there were two farthings to a half penny and four to a penny. Now you know where the expression “not worth a farthing” came from.

Moving up the English currency value chain, there were 12 pennies in a shilling, five shillings to a crown, four crowns or 20 shillings to a pound sterling. The term pound sterling came from the use of sterling silver coins, they weight of a pound was called a “pound sterling.”

However, in 1717, the head of the Royal Mint, the mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, shifted England from using silver as the standard to value its currency to gold as a backing but the moniker didn’t change. Prices in colonial business were written in pounds, shillings and pence, e.g. £7 8s 4d for a price of seven pounds, eight shillings and four pence. Newton standardized the guinea at 21 shillings.

So, if the price was 5 guineas, then then math was easy. Five guineas is 105 shillings or £10 5s. But what if the price is £7 8s 4d and you wanted five. The math and conversion is simple (if you’re Isaac Newton). Multiply each unit of currency by five, i.e. £25 40s 20d. Start with the pence and move up the currency value chain – 20d equals 1s 8d. The extra shilling is added to the total number of shillings to make the total 41 which is £2 1s. The total price becomes is £27 1s 8d.

Dutch guilders were an ounce of silver and one guilder was equal to 20 stuivers. Sixteen pennigen made up one duiteri and you needed eight duiteri to have a single stuiver.

Livre is the French word for pound. Louis XV in 1726 standardized French currency and stipulated a standardized conversion rate for gold to silver, i.e. 14.4867 ounces of silver were equal to one ounce of gold. A gold Louis d’or coin was worth 48 livres and an écu was worth six livres. A sou was worth 1/20th of a livre. But this is France and no one bothered to print or mint any livre coins leaving the livre as a measure of equivalency.

One needed eight reales top have one Spanish dollar, a.k.a. piece of eight. It too had a confusing table of equivalents in gold and silver.

Back in the 18th Century, there weren’t computers, point of sale systems and currency conversion algorithms. If nothing else, our founding fathers were businessmen to the core. To them, the math required to convert livres to pounds or pounds to Spanish Dollars or Dutch guilders made their heads spin. They wanted something simple, hence the U.S. dollar’s decimal system.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the English waited almost two more centuries to change their currency. For those of you who may remember, 50 years ago England finally came to its currency senses. On February 14th, 1971, and long after most of English colonies had adopted decimal based currencies, Great Britain finally redid its currency so that there are now  10 pence to the shilling and 10 shillings to the pound. Hallelujah!!!

Just having to do the math under the 18th Century system of English currency was almost enough to start a revolution!!

Image is a 1775 George III gold coin courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Interview about Flight of the Pawnee with LTC Denny Gillem from Frontlines of Freedom

I was interviewed by the host of Frontlines of Freedom, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Denny Gillem earlier this month. The interview is part of Hour #2, Podcast #682 and is Segment 7 released on January 16th, 2021. The link to the interview is https://frontlinesoffreedom.com/2021/01/16/show-682-2nd-hour/.

 

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Paying Loans Back is Hell When One Is Broke

he 1778 Treaty of Alliance between France and the U.S. bound the two countries together to fight a common enemy, i.e. England and, for the Founding Fathers the treaty achieved four goals. One, recognition by a major European power. This led to recognition of the U.S. by other countries before the Treaty of Paris was signed (see post dated 1/3/21 – https://marcliebman.com/first-ten-countries-to-recognize-the-new-united-states-of-america/)

Two, France would now contribute troops to help defeat the British Army as well as a Navy to break the blockade strangling U.S. international commerce.

Three, the French would provide arms and ammunition. Before the revolution began, large quantities of gunpowder and shot were acquired through a shell company – Rodrique Hortelez and Company – chartered in both France and Spain were smuggled into the colonies. (See blog post-dated 4/26/20 – A Shell Company Provides Arms to the American Revolution – https://marcliebman.com/a-shell-company-…rican-revolution/)

Four, the Treaty of Alliance ensured a flow of desperately needed money. The Continental Congress did not have the power to levy taxes so up until this point, the Continental Army and Navy were funded by loans from wealthy individuals who supported the rebellion, prize money and loans and gifts from France, The Netherlands and Spain.

While negotiating the Treaty of Alliance, Benjamin Franklin convinced the French that payment of the loans should not begin until three years after the treaty with England that would end the war was ratified by the Continental Congress.

This was, in many ways, stroke of genius and showed how little the French knew about the Articles of Confederation. If the Compte de Vergennes or any of the other French diplomats who negotiated the loans and the Treaty of Alliance, ever read the Articles of Confederation, they would never have agreed to this condition.

Why? Because the Continental Congress could not levy taxes on the member states. The governing body could ask for money, but the individual state legislatures decided how much they would contribute.

Fast forward to the signing of the Treaty of Paris on September 3rd, 1783 which did not become effective until May 12th, 1784. On that day, the three-year clock began ticking with first payment due on May 12th, 1787.

Our Founding Father’s experience during the now successful revolution strongly suggested that the Articles of Confederation were, as a governing document, unworkable in the long term. Experience also told them that in order to survive, a strong, centralized government was needed.

They were also brought up in a time that if one could not repay a loan, one went to Debtors Prison. On an international level, not paying back a loan, was a reason to go war.

So, while not THE driving force, paying back the French loans, had to be, if not front and center, at least in the back of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention that began on May 25th, 1787. The loans to France were due, the United States was broke and Continental Congress not only didn’t have the money, it didn’t have the means to collect the money.

Photo of Independence Hall as the room was during the Constitutional convention courtesy of Wikipedia.

 

 

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The First of Two 1778 Treaties With France

As soon as French diplomat Conrad Alexandre Gérard de Rayneval’s quill pen finished scratching across the paper that was the Treaty of Alliance, he brought the French into the war on our side. Benjamin Franklin, Silas Deane and Arthur Lee signed for the Continental Congress. However, that was the second treaty Rayneval signed that day in a room in the Hôtel de Coislin as an agent for Comte de Vergennes, the French Foreign Minister and King Louis XVI.

The first treaty was the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. This document is actually the first recognition by a major power that the Thirteen Colonies are a free and independent entity. This agreement is strictly a “business” deal in that its thirteen clauses define the terms of the “commercial” relationship with the U.S.

In the Treaty of Amity and Commerce the two countries pledge peace and friendship and allow consuls with diplomatic rights in each other’s ports and cities. Both agree to give “most favored nation” status for business laws as well as navigation rights. The treaty commits both nations to mutual protection of all vessels duly registered in either country and to provide manifests and passports on all merchant ships as well as agree to inspection for contraband. Contraband being material that could help an enemy of either country wage war.

There are also rules about how ships are treated if they are stopped by either nation. Both countries agreed to provide safe harbor for both war and merchant ships. The treaty has a ban on fishing in each other’s territorial waters except for the waters off Newfoundland. Fishing off eastern Canada was vital to the economies of Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. In the 1763 Treaty of Paris, France retained two small islands – Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the southern coast of Newfoundland as well as fishing rights in the area. These rights were again included in the !783 Treaty of Paris that ended the American Revolution – see December 20th, 2020 Blog Post Getting to THE Terms of the Treaty of Paris – https://marcliebman.com/getting-to-the-terms-of-the-treaty-of-paris/

Much of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce covers privateers and how they are to be treated. Some of the terms state that privateers can carry and keep property taken from a common enemy and both sides agree not to commission privateers against the other.

By the time this treaty was signed in 1778, American privateers were affecting British trade. By the end of the war, American privateers would capture, depending on the source, between 10 and 15% of the British merchant fleet.

One of the odder clauses is that if the parties declare war on each other, both countries must give the other’s ships free passage for the first six months of the war. The French probably insisted in this clause because in the 18th Century before the American Revolution began, France had been embroiled in six major wars with England (War of Spanish Succession – 1701- 1714; War of the Quadruple Alliance – 1718-1720; War of Austrian Succession – 1740 – 1748; First Carnactic War – 1746-1748; Second Carnactic War -1749 – 1754; and the Seven Years War -1756 – 1763).

In many ways, the American Revolution was another war in a continuing commercial and military struggle for global power between Britain and France that still, in many ways, goes on today. Among French leaders and in Louis XVI’s mind back in 1778, the American Revolution was just one more way to strike back at the British. In the end, American independence would set off a chain of events that would cost Louis XVI everything.

 

Image – Charles E. Mills drawing of the signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce and the Treaty of Alliance

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The Land of the Bean and the Cod

Fishing rights off the Newfoundland and the entrance to the St. Lawrence River were bones of contention during treaty negotiations at the end of the Seven Years War in 1763 and then again in 1783 at the end of the American Revolution. After the first clause which granted independence and the second that described the territory of the new United States of America, came fishing rights. So you might ask why?

Before the American Revolution began, the fishing industry in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island supported about 10,000 folks. Fishing generated approximately 35% of the revenue from these states. Fishing supported colonial shipbuilders, sailmakers, import/export businesses, lumbering, rope making and other related industries.

Cod was most desired fish. Once caught, they were gutted, butterflied and dried. The dried fish were put in barrels between layers of salt and shipped.

In the early part of the 18th Century, most of the fish went south to the Caribbean in exchange for sugar, molasses, spices and rum. Prices in the French Caribbean colonies were more favorable than those controlled by the English, i.e. each barrel of fish bought more. New England fisherman produced far more fish than the British market could absorb. As Popes declared more meatless days of the year, exports of dried fish started going to arch-enemy France (OMG!!!), Spain (ditto France!), Portugal and other Catholic countries.

In 1733, the British Parliament decided enough was enough and passed the Molasses Act which placed a tariff on non-British colony produced sugar and molasses. The law didn’t stop or slow down the increase of Colonial trade with Continental Europe. British plantation owners in the Caribbean convinced Parliament to pass a second law in 1764 called the Sugar Act which placed tariffs on non-British produced rum and sugar and dried fish produced in New England could not be sold anywhere but England.

In response, British goods were boycotted. Two weeks before the Battle for Lexington and Concord, the British Parliament went one step further and passed a new law that severely restricted businesses in New England ability to trade with Britain and its colonies. The law forbade colonials from fishing off Canada and were not allowed to carry any fishing tackle of any kind on a ship without specific permission from Parliament.

Fast forward to 1783 and negotiations with Britain to end the war. One should not be surprised that one of the negotiators, Massachusetts’ John Adams, insisted on the new United States be given fishing rights to the waters off eastern Canada. The significance of fishing to the Massachusetts Bay Colony is commemorated by a 4’ 11” painted wood replica, known as the Sacred Codfish, that still hangs in the chambers of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

The importance of the cod was also immortalized in the ditty penned by John Collins Bossidy in 1910 –

And this is good old Boston,

The home of the bean and the cod,

Where the Lowells talk to the Cabots,

And the Cabots talk only to God.

 

Image courtesy of the Massachusetts Historical Society

 

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First Ten Countries to Recognize the New United States of America

It is one thing for a geographic entity to declare independence as a country, but another to be recognized. For the new United States of America, diplomatic recognition came from unusual places.

During the late 18th Century. France, England, Spain and Russia were the tier 1 powers. Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark (which controlled modern Norway), the Holy Roman Empire made up the next tier down. Germany and Italy wouldn’t unite until 1870 and were, at the time of the American Revolution a mishmash of dukedoms, duchies, and principalities, e.g. Kingdom of Prussia, Grand Duchy of Hesse, Kingdom of Sicily, Republic of San Marco, etc.

The first country that recognized the United States as a sovereign entity was the Kingdom of Morocco. Sultan Mohammed III was rebuilding his country and opened his ports to merchant ships flying the Continental flag in December 1777. The actual Treaty of Peace and Friendship wasn’t signed until June 1786 which, if you go by treaty dates, makes Morocco the eighth country to recognize the United States as a country.

Being recognized by a major power is another big step forward. France, via the Treaty of Alliance signed on February 6th, 1778, became the first 18th Century global power to recognize the nascent U.S.

Next was the Republic of Venice in early 1782. Desperate and for trade and a nation in decline, the Venetians welcomed a relationship with the new country. The Venetians were followed by the Dutch who officially recognized the United States of America on April 19th, 1782. Keep in mind, The Netherlands were early supporters of the American Revolution and provide money, arms and ports in the Caribbean to Continental ships. In many ways, the new United States was following the lead of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands which declared their independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1588.

Spain followed France’s lead on February 20th, 1783. Sweden, which at the time, controlled the Baltic, officially recognized the United States of America on April 3rd, 1783 even though the treaty was completed in February of the same year and kept secret until peace negotiations between the U.S. and England had begun.

By signing the Treaty of Paris, September 3rd, 1783, England became the seventh country to recognize the U.S. as “free, sovereign, and independent states, and that the British Crown and all heirs and successors relinquish claims to the Government, property, and territorial rights of the same, and every part thereof, …” King George III’s signature on the treaty also meant that the German principality of Brunswick-Lüneberg also recognized the U.S. because he was also the Duke and ruler of the small country.

Before the end of 1783, the Republic of Ragusa on the Dalmatian Coast (modern Croatia) recognized us as a country. The Papal States, an S-shaped country in the middle of the Italian boot that ran from Rome to Ravenna, signed a treaty with the U.S. on December 14th, 1784.

Prussia recognized the U.S. on September 18th, 1785 followed by the Free Hanseatic State of Hamburg on June 19th, 1780 which was the 10th country to recognize the new country.

All this happened by the time the next major upheaval in the world – the French Revolution – began in May 1789. By the end of the 18th Century, our republic was recognized by 21 countries. Not a bad start at time when the prevailing wisdom is that to be successful as a country, one had to be ruled by royalty.

Image – Signature page of the Moroccan/U.S. treaty courtesy of Wikipedia.

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Victory Day – Charleston Retaken

In the aftermath of Lord Cornwallis’ surrender at Yorktown, General Sir Henry Clinton, the commander of British forces in North America was recalled to England, His replacement was General Guy Carleton, the Royal Governor of Quebec, was sent to New York in late 1781. In mid-1782, Carleton received secret orders to prepare for evacuation. His orders were vague in that they gave neither the time nor date to bring British forces and their supporters out of the war zone.

For the British Army in the Carolinas this was welcome news. General Alexander Leslie, now the commander of the British Army, mercenary and Loyalist units in South Carolina were holding their own but were pulling back to Charleston so they would not be trapped a la Cornwallis.

Opposing him were Continental Army units commanded by General Nathaniel Greene, Colonel Harry “Light Horse” Lee and General Anthony Wayne and many guerilla units that had been harassing the British Army since Charleston had been captured.

With his troops deployed around Charleston, General Leslie wrote to General Greene in the early summer of 1782 proposing that they agree to a ceasefire. Greene responded by saying he didn’t have the authority from the Continental Congress to make such a deal. Greene’s army was way too small to defeat the British in a major battle so he maintained patrols that prevented the British from foraging for food.

In Georgia, where Loyalist sympathies were the strongest among the southern colonies, the British were also under pressure from militia and guerilla units. On July 11th, 1782, the last British soldier left Savannah. Some marched to Florida, others left by ship.

Charleston was still in British hands. With his supplies almost exhausted, General Leslie wrote another letter to General Greene asking that his men be allowed into the countryside to purchase food and firewood. Greene refused because he knew that eventually he could starve the British into surrendering.

There were many skirmishes between British foraging parties and Greene’s men. Whatever supplies Leslie’s men could find was not nearly enough to sustain his army.

In the Battle of Combahee River on August 27th, 1782, John Laurens, the eldest son of Henry Laurens was killed. The elder Laurens was instrumental in getting peace talks started when he was incarcerated in the Tower of London. (see blog post – The Rocky Road to Peace – https://marcliebman.com/the-rocky-road-to-peace-talks/)

On November 14th, 1782, 80 Continental Army soldiers under Thaddeus Kosciusko attempted to stop a British Army patrol out to cut wood on James Island. The British were prepared and immediately sent 300 men to defeat the Americans. Kosciusko and his men were forced to pull back. Unfortunately, three Americans, one – William Smith – a freed slave died that day in what is known as the Battle of Dills Bluff and became the last battlefield casualties of the American Revolution.

The November 14th scrap is also significant because on that day, the British began to leave Charleston. General Leslie sent word to General Greene that if he doesn’t allow the British to evacuate peacefully, he will burn the city to the ground. Greene, not trusting the British, moved his troops closer to Charleston so they could watch the British depart.

The Royal Navy sent 130 ships and according to British records, 14,307 people – 5,000 British Army and Loyalist soldiers, Hessian mercenaries, 3,974 white men, women and children and 5,333 people of African descent – were evacuated. The last British ship left Charleston on December 14th, 1782 a day that for decades was celebrated as Victory Day in the South Carolina city.

Image courtesy of the Charleston Museum, Charleston, SC

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The Myths of Autorotations

To pilots of the fixed wing community and to many civilians, they think if a helicopter has a serious mechanical problem, the pilot can autorotate to a safe landing. The uniformed equate gliding in a fixed wing airplane with autorotations in helicopters. To which I say, baloney, they are not the same.

Civilian helicopters tend to be operated in urban areas by the police, fire departments, radio stations and corporate flight departments. Considering all the power and telephone lines around, there aren’t many open areas to put one down. Or in the Navy, over open w6ater. Again, what seems to be simple, i.e. landing in the water, isn’t.

When a helicopter is autorotating, it is not going to travel very far. Very early in the Naval Air Training command, I learned that once the helicopter entered an autorotation, where I was going to land was not miles ahead, it was right below my feet. In other words, the helicopter doesn’t glide very far.

So, your helicopter has to land immediately. First thing is lower the collective to the bottom stop ASAP. The collective is the control that controls the pitch of all the blades, engine rpm and power being generated by the engine(s). If the pilot doesn’t get the collective down, and assuming the problem is related to the engine or engines, the rotors will start to slow down. Below a certain rpm, the helicopter becomes an uncontrollable brick.

With the collective firmly held down on the bottom stop, things happen very fast. The helicopter is descending in a hurry, as in 4,000 – 6,000 feet per minute. Do the math, if you are at 1,000 feet and the descent rate is 4,000 feet, you have one quarter or a minute – 15 seconds – to find a place to land.

Once the nose attitude is in the optimum or near optimum position for the best autorotation speed, next up is the landing itself. Remember, in an autorotation, the helicopter doesn’t have any engine power or has some other major problem such as a fire, battle damage, pieces coming off the helicopter, etc. sanity along with the desire to live says land NOW!

The theory in landing from a full auto rotation is that the pilot trades rotor rpm for rate of descent to cushion the landing. How the autorotation landing is performed depends on the size and type the helicopter, but what follows are the basic steps.

Somewhere around 100 – 150 feet, the pilot starts raising the nose to bleed off airspeed. The pilot trades off airspeed until the helicopter is about 20 – 40 feet off the ground and then flares (hauls the nose up). For a fraction of a second, the rotors accelerate and then start to decay, i.e. slow down. The trick is to land safely, not softly, while you still have enough rotor rpm to control the helicopter.

Flare too high and the pilot will run out of rotor rpm before the helicopter touches down. The result is a crash of some type. The preferred technique is to rock the helicopter forward and land with a modest – less than 10 knots – amount of forward airspeed. If the helicopter has wheels, the pilot can land with more forward speed than if the helo has skids.

Experience says it is better to wait too long and make a running landing than to flare to soon and run out of rpm. However, if one is squeezing the helo into a confined area, the pilot has to get everything right the first time.

Getting all of this right is not easy. Do it right, and you have a very good chance of walking away. Get one of many variables wrong, and you’re along with everyone else in the helicopter are going to have a very bad day!

When I was in the training command, we practiced full autorotation in the TH-57 over and over again. A full autorotation is one in which you use only the aerodynamic forces and the inertia in the rotor blades to control and land the helicopter. We students had to perform them from several different attitudes and altitudes on your check ride. Even with an instructor in the right seat, there was always the danger of rolling one in a ball.

When I reached the “fleet” in 1969, we could practice full autos in the single engine H-2A/B. In the twin-engine H-2C/D, H-3, and H-60s, they were verboten. We did everything down to where we flared the helicopter just before landing which was about 40 feet above the ground.

I guess the reason that full autos in a multi-engine helicopter were forbidden is that some mathematician figured out that the chances of us every having to do one for real was not very high. I’ll be that guy never flew a helo in his life, much less in a combat situation.

Or, that Commanding Officers didn’t want some junior officer crash a helicopter during his tour as CO. Accidents, particularly, if the investigating board determines that there was some supervisory error contributed to the accident are bad for one’s career.

In my 3,000 plus hours of flying helicopters, I’ve had engine, hydraulic, a tail rotor control and other system failures. All were brought back aboard the carrier or destroyer or the Naval Air Station. Thankfully, I never had to perform a full autorotation.

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