The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

May 27, 2008

Air Force scouting Pipestem for possible training

Mannix Porterfield

Make way for the Super Jolly Green Giant in West Virginia this week, and it’s not coming to scoop any peas out of anyone’s fertile ground.

Too early for that, anyway.

What the Air Force plans to do is land some Sikorsky HH-53 Pave Low helicopters in the Pipestem area, scouting the region as a possible home base for some training missions.

Billed as the Air Force’s most powerful and technologically modern transport helicopter, the aircraft gets its name from the smaller HH-3E, or “Jolly Green Giant,” popular during the Vietnam War.

Officially, the helicopter is known as the Stallion and is used in Special Forces missions.

Not only is Pipestem the potential site of the training exercises, but there is another West Virginia connection — one of the pilots making the Thursday trip is Matthew Garcia, whose father, Joe, is a retired Air Force master sergeant in Pipestem.

“At each training opportunity, or new training location, they have to physically land two helicopters to make sure that they’ll fit, and check out the surrounding obstacles,” the senior Garcia explained Tuesday.

“Because normally, when they fly these missions, they are at night.”

Garcia said his son and the other pilot plan to be on the ground about 15 minutes.

“They have to check them out in broad daylight to make sure that there’s nothing surprising,” he said.

“That’s the purpose of this particular visit.”

Plans call for the “Super Jolly Green Giants” to land at the Pipestem Ruritan Club and also check out Pipestem Christian Academy in the same vicinity.

“They, too, have a large field, so they may pick up the birds and actually move them across to the other field,” Garcia said.

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com

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