I grew up around the corner from this plant! Wow! Brings back great memories of helicopters flying in and out of there before they moved to the bigger plant in Ridley!
Me too ! I grew up in Norwood, 1981 Interboro HS grad. Me too ! I grew up in Norwood, 1981 Interboro HS grad. I remember the takeoff/landing pads were still right off of Church Ave in the 1980’s.
Loved this film! Absolutely makes me think of my dad in the Korean War, I loved helicopters since I was a kid and when he called them the flying bananas I could see why! But these machines were unique and cool!
I was lucky enough to spend some of my youth around those beasts. My dad was in charge of a squadron of H21s stationed in Schefferville Quebec. They were used to ferry fuel oil out to the old Mid-Canda Line radar sites. The oil was shipped out on PBYs (Cansos in Canada) which landed in nearby lakes and pumped the oil into drums on shore. The H21s would rendezvous and sling in the oil drums when they were done. Glorious to live about 500 feet from the gravel runway that those birds and choppers used to take off from. This was around 1960.
Incidentally, a few pieces of historical computing equipment also show up in this film. At 6:40 to 6:55, the machine the woman is working with is the operator's console of an IBM 650 computer. The IBM 650, which was based on vacuum tubes instead of transistors, is often credited as the first mass-produced electronic digital computer; nearly 2,000 were built, and many early computer programmers got their start on an IBM 650 system. At 8:52 to 8:58 is an IBM tabulator of some sort; this was basically an electromechanical adding machine that got its data from a deck of punched cards and printed out the results it added up. Tabulators were commonplace in business in this period, used for things like generating payroll or inventory. At 18:30 to 18:56, I'm not sure what system the guy in the "Computing Laboratory" is working with, but the circuit board he wires up and plugs in is a programming plugboard. A number of early pieces of computing equipment were programmed or configured by setting up such wired plugboards. Such boards could be wired in advance, set aside for later use when needed, and rewired if details needed to be changed.
I used to, and still do once in awhile, drive by the old Morton, Pennsylvania plant building of Vertol…Boeing Vertol. It was a BJ’s for awhile, but I don’t know what’s there now. The actual original buildings are still there. - The current Osprey production buildings and huge wind tunnel is only about 8 miles away from the Morton site in Eddystone, Pennsylvania.
Almost all were H-21s. But the helicopters in the Tampico sequence from 0:56 to 1:45 were all HUP Retrievers. Definitely no HRP-1s in the film. Since the HRP-2 looked a lot like the H-21, it's hard to be sure that no HRP-2s showed up in a shot somewhere, but very few of them were built, so it seems unlikely that they appeared here.
Wow thank you. Just met a vertrol pilot from Korea and Vietnam. He’s 90! A retired colonel and flew these.
Salute
I grew up around the corner from this plant! Wow! Brings back great memories of helicopters flying in and out of there before they moved to the bigger plant in Ridley!
Me too ! I grew up in Norwood, 1981 Interboro HS grad. Me too ! I grew up in Norwood, 1981 Interboro HS grad. I remember the takeoff/landing pads were still right off of Church Ave in the 1980’s.
Loved this film! Absolutely makes me think of my dad in the Korean War, I loved helicopters since I was a kid and when he called them the flying bananas I could see why! But these machines were unique and cool!
I was lucky enough to spend some of my youth around those beasts. My dad was in charge of a squadron of H21s stationed in Schefferville Quebec. They were used to ferry fuel oil out to the old Mid-Canda Line radar sites. The oil was shipped out on PBYs (Cansos in Canada) which landed in nearby lakes and pumped the oil into drums on shore. The H21s would rendezvous and sling in the oil drums when they were done. Glorious to live about 500 feet from the gravel runway that those birds and choppers used to take off from. This was around 1960.
Really interesting!! 👏👏👏👏
Incidentally, a few pieces of historical computing equipment also show up in this film. At 6:40 to 6:55, the machine the woman is working with is the operator's console of an IBM 650 computer. The IBM 650, which was based on vacuum tubes instead of transistors, is often credited as the first mass-produced electronic digital computer; nearly 2,000 were built, and many early computer programmers got their start on an IBM 650 system. At 8:52 to 8:58 is an IBM tabulator of some sort; this was basically an electromechanical adding machine that got its data from a deck of punched cards and printed out the results it added up. Tabulators were commonplace in business in this period, used for things like generating payroll or inventory. At 18:30 to 18:56, I'm not sure what system the guy in the "Computing Laboratory" is working with, but the circuit board he wires up and plugs in is a programming plugboard. A number of early pieces of computing equipment were programmed or configured by setting up such wired plugboards. Such boards could be wired in advance, set aside for later use when needed, and rewired if details needed to be changed.
thank you for sharing you're insight! I always love seeing this era of computing equipment.
I used to, and still do once in awhile, drive by the old Morton, Pennsylvania plant building of Vertol…Boeing Vertol. It was a BJ’s for awhile, but I don’t know what’s there now. The actual original buildings are still there.
- The current Osprey production buildings and huge wind tunnel is only about 8 miles away from the Morton site in Eddystone, Pennsylvania.
Fantastic.
Were all of the helicopters H-21's or weren't some of them the earlier HRP and HUP's?
Almost all were H-21s. But the helicopters in the Tampico sequence from 0:56 to 1:45 were all HUP Retrievers. Definitely no HRP-1s in the film. Since the HRP-2 looked a lot like the H-21, it's hard to be sure that no HRP-2s showed up in a shot somewhere, but very few of them were built, so it seems unlikely that they appeared here.
Fog4