U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K rescues MH-60S from 10,000 feet in California

A U.S. Marine Corps CH-53K King Stallion heavy-lift helicopter has airlifted a U.S. Navy MH-60S Seahawk off a mountainside in California’s Sierra Nevada, recovering the stranded helicopter undamaged so it can fly again, the U.S. Navy said.

The CH-53K, from Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron 1, carried the nearly 16,000-pound (7,260-kilogram) Seahawk on a 70-foot (21-meter) long-line to an airfield at Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in late September.

The MH-60S, which belongs to Air Test and Evaluation Squadron 31, had made a hard landing at an elevation of 10,000 feet (3,050 meters). It was not damaged, but the slope of the ground left it unable to take off. The remote, high-altitude site made it very hard to bring in people and equipment, including the gear needed to drain fuel and make the helicopter lighter.

The Navy said the King Stallion was the only aircraft able to carry out the recovery because of the power needed and the tight terrain around the site.

“The hardest part of this recovery wasn’t necessarily lifting the H-60,” said Maj. Lee Henderson, the CH-53K pilot and lead planner. “It was figuring out how to do it safely without causing any additional damage.”

To keep the Seahawk intact, engineers from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division’s Cargo Lab and Structures Lab designed a special rigging setup. The team lifted the helicopter by its built-in lift points with the hoisting sling made for it, instead of hooking onto the main rotor head, and removed only the main and tail rotor blades to protect them during the flight.

“We integrated established MH-60S crane-lifting procedures and the hoist sling with a 70-foot long-line to ensure proper load distribution and obstacle clearance,” said Henderson.

The long-line was longer than the standard sling line used across the U.S. military for carrying loads under helicopters, so the mission also served to certify the CH-53K to use it. The Structures Lab bought a commercially available line and tested it up to 20,000 pounds (9,070 kilograms) with a crane at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, before the flight clearance was approved. Structures Lab team lead Brandon Norris said the testing and clearances took less than two weeks from the time the squadron reached out.

The weight of the Seahawk, the altitude, the distance and the weather pushed the CH-53K to the edge of its flight envelope for both power and fuel, said Michele Hoefer, an aerospace engineer with the Cargo Lab. Henderson credited the helicopter’s power, its precise fly-by-wire flight controls and its ability to calculate available power in real time from engine performance and conditions with reducing the risk of the lift.

“Once we got to the actual lift the (CH-53K) gave us the power and precision we needed to get the job done,” said Henderson.

The same squadron flew a similar mission five years ago. In September 2021, two VMX-1 King Stallions recovered another downed Navy MH-60S from a 12,000-foot ridge on Mount Hogue in California’s White Mountains, a lift the Navy described at the time as the CH-53K’s first real-world fleet mission. The helicopter has since been put through a series of external lift tests, and in July the Navy tested one CH-53K lifting another to prepare for aircraft recovery missions.

Built by Sikorsky, the CH-53K is the largest helicopter in the U.S. military and is replacing the older CH-53E Super Stallion in Marine heavy-lift squadrons. The recovered MH-60S is expected to return to flying without extensive maintenance.