Jolly Green Rescue Helicopters

The picture below shows the Jolly Green Giant rescue helicopter used in Vietnam rescue operations along with two Air Force A-1 fighters as in my previous post. These Jolly Greens came equipped with armor plating, self sealing fuel tanks, their own machine guns and a 240 foot long rescue cable for extracting downed pilots in jungle too heavy for use as a landing zone. They had a pilot, co-pilot and a para-rescue enlisted crewman. The para-rescue crewman sometimes had to ride the cable down to strap a badly wounded pilot into the rescue harness. Most of the Jolly Greens were Air Force, but there were some navy models. I saw them on board the Kitty Hawk. I always admired the crewmen of the Jolly Greens as every mission was a potentially last mission. When pilots were shot down over Vietnam, any enemy in the area would head in that direction to try and capture the pilot. The downed pilot was usually in a hot zone and the Jolly Green crews were often under fire.

The A-1 pilots would swoop in and locate where the downed pilot was and then use machine gun fire to sweep any enemy troops out and away from the area so the Jolly Greens could rescue the downed pilots. On occasion one of the A-1 pilots would get shot down, making rescue of a second pilot even more dangerous.