Under the Verrazano Bridge
One sunny summer afternoon, I was the aircraft commander and had a helicopter and four and a half hours of fuel to burn. We, i.e. the crew, needed to log flight time to ensure we reached the minimum of 110 hours per year. For the record, 120 was desired and 140 hours was the real number.
Our SH-3A didn’t have an operating sonar so we couldn’t go out into the Atlantic and practice dipping, i.e. lowering our sonar dome and listening for submarines. Other than the engines and rotor system, only the UHF radio and transponder worked, but not the tactical air navigation (TACAN) system. The limited our options to a VFR (visual flight rules) cross-country or spending 4.5 hours shooting touch and goes or practice hovering.
So what’s there to see within 225 nautical miles of Lakehurst, NJ? One could fly up and down the Hudson and East River of New York past West Point. Or venture into the mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Or take a beach tour down the Jersey and Delaware shores.
We knew where all the nudist colonies and their beaches were on the East coast from Brunswick, Maine all the way down to Key West, Florida and were very careful to avoid them like the plague unless we were above 1,000 feet. Why? Our helicopters had large numbers on the side and if we flew too close, lifeguards on the nudist beach with their binoculars plenty of time to record our number and call the Navy or the FAA. The result was not pretty, i.e. one was asked to leave the squadron and the Navy.
After discussing the best way to spend our 4.5 hours, we decided on a low level sightseeing trip up the Hudson River past Manhattan to around Kingston, NY and then weave our way through the mountains of Northern New Jersey back to Lakehurst. As a helicopter, we didn’t have any altitude or route restrictions.
Viewed from either the New York Harbor or the Atlantic side, from sea level or standing on the short, the Verrazano Narrows bridge is an imposing structure that towers above you. At its highest point, the base of the roadway is 228 feet above the water at mean high water. In other words, when one is flying at 100 feet above the water, the base of the bridge is 100+ feet above you.
Understand that flying around Manhattan over the Hudson and East Rivers, helicopters are restricted to 500 feet. We were expected to fly over or around the George Washington, Manhattan, 59th Street and Williamsburg bridges even though there were heliports on both sides of the island. Some were restricted to police and NY Port Authority helos, others were open to the public.
One time, we were sent to the East Side Heliport on 34th Street and that was a hoot. That’s a story for another time and place.
We’d been following the Jersey shore north toward New York City at 500, supposedly a quarter mile off the beach. Flying past Sandy Hook, we descended to 100 feet. Rather than climb or go over the Verrazano Narrow Bridge or fly around it, for reasons known only to broccoli and God, I decided to fly under the bridge. At the time, my co-pilot and I thought this would be a cool thing to do.
Approach the bridge, we could see scaffoldings on the sides and below the lower roadway. We could see by the different shades of the structure, workers were painting the bridge. Again, no big deal until I realized they were along the entire underside of the bridge. Being the hard charging, confident Naval Aviator, rather than turn around, fly out over the harbor entrance and climb to get over or around the bridge, we continued straight ahead.
Halfway under the bridge, to my surprise and horror, I saw a ladder and a bucket of paint tumble from the scaffolding. Both passed less than 50 yards from the helicopter. Thankfully, there wasn’t a body following or preceding the paint and ladder.
Had that ladder or paint bucket come down through our rotor blades, I wouldn’t be writing this story and my survivors, as well as those of my crewmembers, would be cursing my stupid decision to fly under a bridge. I still get the chills thinking about that moment, 50 odd years ago. What in God’s green earth was I thinking?
By the way, I have not flown under a bridge since then!
Don’t walk under ladders; don’t fly under bridges!
Absolutely!!!
…well, at least you didn’t try to pull that stunt at night. Being a former U.S. Army aviator myself, I’m kinda surprised you didn’t do some kinda recon first…I have an email picture somewhere of a friend of mine flying in the front seat of a Cobra, in Vietnam. Well, that’s not completely true; he wasn’t really occupying the Cobra’s front seat, at the moment, because he was mooning the photographer, in another helicopter. The only thing I could think was what if that AH-1 had an accident/forced landing/shot down right then. How would the accident investigation board ‘describe’ their …..findings?
Hi,
Thanx for the note. Not sure why I didn’t think of a recon other than it looked as if we had plenty of room under the bridge. And, we couldn’t see the people on the scaffolding, just the scaffolding itself. Who would have thought something would have fallen down.
Like I said, my memory of the event still gives me the willies!!!
I wish you and my Uncle Tim Seward could have met when you were both aviators.
Thanx… Me too!!!
What year was this?
Hi,
I chose not to give the precise year, but I know who my co-pilot was.
Why are you asking?
Marc
Marc,
My Dad told a story of taking a flight of several SOCs under the Brooklyn bridge around 1942. Like fatter/like son copycat flying had been on my bucket list for many years. I finally got it out of my system after several flights under river bridges in a Cub on floats. Man that was fun!
(and of course looking carefully to stay away from cables and photographers 🙂
Bob,
Thou art braver than I. Ever since that flight, the only way I’d fly around a bridge is over it.
marc
Great story! glad that you had no repercussions… I could share a similar story from a sister squadron flying a Delta and the bridge was orange. Nothing scary happened but it was memorable. Names are remembered but will not be mentioned.
There were no repercussions. I think the crew kept quiet about it as did the pilots. We could have all gotten grounded and afterwards, I made it clear to all concerned that I would never do that again.
Great post Marc!
I flew H-52’s in the Coast Guard and from ’76-’80 was stationed at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn, NY. I think that was the time frame you completed this nefarious flight under the VZ bridge. Of note: we all flew under the VZ bridge at least once during our tour of duty there. It was almost a right of passage. We weren’t supposed to do so unless there was a reason, but you could always say you saw some oil on the water or a vessel needing assistance. Our main missions were SAR and MEP (Marine Environmental Protection) so we had a built in excuse for such excursions. Even the CO bragged about having flown under the bridge in an HU-16; the old fixed wing albatross. I never saw anything fall past us, and in hind site it was stupid. I was in my mid twenties then and still knew everything. Also we knew where all the nudie beaches were on Long Island and used to low level fly them regularly. Again our excuse was we were looking for distressed bathers in the surf. The only time I recall there was a problem was when someone called the station and said we had blown over an umbrella and it struck the breast of one of the young ladies there. I heard that story second hand so…no doubt it is true…maybe.
Take care and thanks for the post.
LOL…. And yes, it was stupid. Every time I think about flying under the bridge, I get the shivers. BTW, there was a nude beach south of Lakehurst and we were forbidden to fly closer than a quarter mile from the shoreline. We had big numbers on the sides of the H-3s so it would be easy to identify who the culprit was.