“ I'm David Flockencier. I crewed 150271, tail #04 on board the USS San Jose. HC5 Det 1 during operation desert shield/storm in 1990-91. She was my favorite bird to fly. I was second crewman and rescue swimmer then. We left Guam in August I think and stayed in the PI for a couple weeks then went to Singapore for 2 days. Then we were on our way across the Indian Ocean and up to the north Arabian Sea and into the Persian gulf. We split our time between Maharashtra, Oman and fuhjira,UAE when we weren't servicing the fleet. We did lots work with the Independence battle group and one or two Marine Amphibious Groups. We probably served at least 30 ships. So many I couldn't keep track of them all. I remember one of them was the USS Nassau, a helo carrier and its group. 150271 was always ready to do the job. I always had faith in her. One time though I thought we were in big trouble. We took off from the Jose and were flying around for about 45 minuets and everything seemed fine until we all heard what sounded like an engine winding down. Everyone was freaking out until we realized that the APU overtemped And did an auto-shutdown! Scared the crap out of all of us, but once we figured out the pilots forgot to shut down the APU we all had a big laugh and a sigh of relief. I'll never forget that bird. Hardly ever went down and had lots of power and we had her tracked and balanced perfectly. The other helo we had on that Det was 151952 and she's hanging from the ceiling at the Naval Aviation Museum at Pensacola NAS. She was a/c 05. They've got her painted differently now but it's still the same ship. I'll never forget those two helos and my time flying in them. God bless the USA and Go Navair! ”