Flight through time Helicopters: History in the skies

Soldiers in green, jungle camouflage and army boots, carrying an injured soldier between them on a gurney run toward the hunter-green helicopter and the safety in the sky.

A moment in time, one of many in a war that is well-known for its use of helicopters. It’s just one of the images from the Vietnam War where helicopters were a part of the landscape of the war and images of soldiers hitching rides in military helicopters are familiar.

Helicopters have had a key place in military history, but helicopters have a history in both the world of military aviation and the civilian world.

Helicopters are used for medical emergencies to transport severely injured civilians to hospitals where specialists wait and firefighters hover in helicopters to battle forest fires.

"It's amazing how we've evolved into a program with such medically advanced mobile intensive care aircrafts," stated Nurse Denise Landis in a press release from the University of Michigan Health System. "With new medical technology now available we're able to transport some of the most critically ill and injured patients in from hospitals and accident sites to UMHS for specialized care, aid in rescue operations and transport harvest teams for organ donations."

The metal birds also are frequently used to carry food and supplies to third world countries on humanitarian missions and more.
The helicopter wasn’t a one-man invention, but took a number of steps by a number of people to get off the ground, one piece as important as another like the pieces of a puzzle.

Helicopter technology was born centuries ago with ideas like those of Leonardo Da Vinci, who drew pictures that look remarkably like modern helicopters.

Some of the later inventors who inched toward a working helicopter model included Louis and Jacques Bréguet, who spent 1906 and 1907 working on experiments to create an object that could hover, according to the U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission.

The brothers didn’t create what is referred to today as a helicopter, but they established a stepping stone to the next phase toward a working helicopter. Around the same time, a French bike maker took additional steps and ended up getting about one foot off the ground and staying up for approximately 20 seconds, according to the site.

Not a major accomplishment by today’s standards, but a huge step in helicopter aviation at the time.
Then, just two years later, Igor Sikorsky was getting closer and closer to a working helicopter model, according to the U.S.Centennial of Flight Commission.

More followed and it seems there were many who tried their hands at flight during the early 1900s. Technology advanced through the years and the United States Army even joined on the bandwagon in the early years before the technology was perfected, according to the Web site.

Once scientists worked out all the kinks and discovered how to get helicopters up and off in reliable transportation, the United States military took advantage of the power behind the helicopter.

“Helicopters have evolved for many different types of Army missions, including air assault, scouting/intelligence, troop transport and resupply,” the U.S. Army states on its Web site. “Army helicopters support our ground troops' success by gathering enemy data, moving Soldiers and supplies and delivering firepower from above.”