Following the tour of the HH-60G Pave Hawk, we now have the chance to see its successor, the HH-60W, up close and learn some more details about it.
About two weeks ago we commented the walkaround tour of the HH-60G Pave Hawk filmed by our friend Erik Johnston and featuring Captain Phil “Caso” White, a rescue pilot of the 41st Rescue Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. Now, they take us through a tour of the HH-60G’s successor, the HH-60W Jolly Green II, which was first delivered to the U.S. Air Force in November 2020.
Depicted in this video is the HH-60W 17-14486, one of the first Jolly Green II helicopters and also one of the choppers involved in the developmental testing with the 413th Flight Test Squadron at Duke Field, Florida, last year. As we already reported, the Combat Rescue Helicopter program will procure 108 HH-60Ws to replace the ageing fleet of Pave Hawk helicopters, which are already well past their expected flying life and with a declining availability rate due to the age of the airframes and the high operations tempo of the fleet.
The first stop of this tour is the HH-60’s peculiar air-to-air refueling probe. The 8-foot-long probe itself is the same of the older Pave Hawk, however the airframe design around the probe’s root has been changed. The mounting point of the probe has been strengthened, reducing the airframe fatigue caused by the probe’s oscillations and reducing the risk of cracks, which were found on some of the HH-60Gs because of the fatigue.
https://theaviationist.com/2021/07/10/hh-60w-walkaround/
