Old Helicopter Awaits Rescue, Draws Gawkers

It was a gawker magnet, this gleaming, bulky, silver antique of a helicopter, that hunkered Monday on a Simi Valley soccer field awaiting its rescuers.

Preschoolers, retirees, dog walkers and parents with fascinated toddlers clustered around the chopper, touching its bagel-shaped tires and pointing at its sleek skin of riveted aluminum.

The 1950s-vintage Vertol H-21B made an emergency landing there Sunday at Rancho Santa Susana Community Park when its owner, Bill Rodgers, felt a vibration shudder through the chopper.

There it must wait, said Rodgers, who returned Monday to tow the Vertol off the soccer field and into a nearby parking lot.

“I haven’t had a peep of trouble out of it till now,” said Rodgers of Ramona. “But we didn’t want to take a risk. It’s more of a comfort thing, really.”

Rodgers said he plans to tow the chopper to Van Nuys to have the alignment checked on its twin 46-foot-diameter rotors. He may have to wait until early Sunday morning for state towing permits and light traffic so he can tow the helicopter slowly on its own wheels via local roads, he said.

Rodgers said he was en route from the Point Mugu Air Show to his home airfield in Chino on Sunday afternoon when the vibration developed and he decided to land until it could be inspected.

The Air Force bought the Vertol in 1957 to ferry bomber pilots around Antarctica. The chopper later labored for phone and power companies in Nebraska, carrying telephone poles beneath its low-slung belly, Rodgers said.

“Two Army platoons in H-21s were the first major troop commitment by the U.S. to Vietnam during the Vietnam War,” said Rodgers, a postal employee, decked out Monday in a vintage olive-drab flight suit.

Rodgers figures he has sunk about $65,000 into the Korean War-era bird since he bought it in 1989 from a classified ad he saw in a helicopter magazine. Now he flies it to air shows and teaches folks about its history.

“It’s a big headache,” he said, “but it’s worth it.”