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John Gaydor
Look at this short series of photos before reading further, please...
Here is some quick background for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Black Helicopter story: For many years now, stories of mysterious black helicopters have been circulating on the Internet and short wave radio. Legend has it that the helicopters are part of a large conspiracy run by the United Nations. Variations on the theme blame the U.S. government, the Tri Lateral Commission or the Bilderburgers. Sometimes, hostile extraterrestrials are included in the list of suspects. The ultimate reason for these flights is believed to be the enslavement of the world into a "New World Order" (NWO).
Maybe there is a conspiracy and maybe the helicopters do exist. I don't know. I do know that the UN does do some pretty scary things with just pens and paper which certainly are a danger to the sovereignty of free nations, and at least give the appearance of world-wide amalgamation.
However, my reason for writing this is to offer a few, somewhat more plausible explanations for the sightings of these strange helicopters. The people who believe in or know positively about the helicopters may write me off as one of the "useful idiots" Lenin wrote about, but I am convinced that at least some of the sightings are attributable to benign circumstances, some of which I have firsthand knowledge of.
A partial, albeit simple explanation could lie in the project name given to the helicopter purchased during the mid 1980's by the United States. It's called the "Blackhawk". (The navy and cost guard call their versions "Seahawks".) This helicopter is now used for every mission that the U.S armed forces fly: troop movement, casevac, transport, Command and Control, etc. At the time, however, seeing a new Blackhawk was worth remarking about. Say "Blackhawk helicopter" aloud. Say it quickly, and I think you will see what I mean. Poor hearing on the part of a listener, or poor enunciation on the part of someone talking about seeing "one of those new Blackhawk helicopters" could easily result in the unintentional corruption, "one of those Black helicopters". This bastardization may still be responsible for some of the reported sightings of black-coloured helicopters today.
Other possibilities:
In 1983 I joined the Lincoln and Welland Regiment. The "Lincs and Winks", as they are sometimes called, is an infantry regiment within the Canadian Armed Forces Reserve. It has roots which go all the way back to the War of 1812, and recruits members from the Niagara region of southern Ontario. This area forms part of the international border between Canada and the U.S. along the Niagara River between Ontario and western New York State. At the time, the Regiment had its Headquarters, two Rifle and one Support companies, plus an Armor Defence Platoon (equipped with 106mm recoilless rifles) based out of St.Catharines. Another Rifle Company worked out of the regiment's satellite armory in Niagara Falls, Ontario. During this era, the "Companies" were really only "platoon plus" in size due to defence funding cutbacks.
Based across the river in Niagara Falls, New York was B Company of the 142nd Aviation Battalion (coincidentally nicknamed The Blackhearts), a US Army National Guard unit. This unit was equipped with (I'm guessing) at least twenty UH-1B "Huey" (replaced later in front line units by the "Blackhawk". See above.) helicopters and a couple of Hughes 500 "Loach" observation helicopters. B Company was capable of easily transporting our entire Regiment (minus vehicles) in just a couple of lifts.
"The Links" had men but no helicopters. The 142nd had helicopters but no men. It didn't take long for the commanders of both units to realize the opportunity for training exchanges in which both entities benefited.
The American helicopters were painted a very dark green. Some were mottled with black patches in places were they had been repaired. These helicopters looked black against a blue sky in the daytime. Even on the ground, it would be very easy for a casual observer--especially a civilian unfamiliar with the significance in subtle colour variations--to mistakenly identify the choppers as being black in colour, and of course at night, every helicopter on earth "turns black".
During the seven years I was in the Regiment, we conducted lots of flying in Canada and the United States. We flew at least two exercises a year with them. Most lifts were down into Allegheny State Park, a huge green space on the border of Pennsylvania and New York states. The park afforded very hilly and challenging terrain--ideal for conducting infantry exercises in. The park also joined onto the Tuscarora Indian Nation, a reserve rumoured to be heavily in to cigarette and weapons smuggling--a fact that gains importance at the end of this article.
At least once we flew to both Camp Borden and to Camp Petawawa in Canada. To get to Petawawa we flew up on the American side of Lake Ontario, stopping at Fort Drum, NY for fuel, and came back via the Canadian side. Both routes exposed us to thousands of service personnel and civilians who were not used to seeing either American helicopters, or conversely, Canadians inside American helicopters. This created fertile soil to grow rumours in.
Other highly visible training scenarios involved a large airmobile attack on a local airport, and another time the liberation of a section of the Welland Canal from a simulated enemy. We did an airmobile demonstration at an air show in western New York, and at Fort George in Niagara on the Lake. There were also a few landings at an abandoned WW2 ammunition storage depot called Project 38, which was somewhere near Alcott, NY, I think. Very rural and very mysterious with high fences and huge abandoned bunkers with thick blast doors that yawned open. We would also occasionally take off or land in schoolyards or scrubby areas on the edge of town for these gigs. Landing in town caused such a commotion there were a few minor car crashes as rubbernecking drivers watched us land.
Perhaps one of the most famous things the Regiment became known for was the large amount of helicopter rappelling we conducted. Almost every member from the Colonel down (including clerks, cooks and mechanics) of the regiment was eventually qualified in this skill. Most of this training was conducted at the Niagara on the Lake rifle range, and it was also then incorporated into many exercise scenarios.
The combined training between nations benefited everyone involved: we were able to gain technical experience with helicopters and airmobile tactics, while the 142nd got a chance to work with foreign troops and conduct troop movements--activities they did not do very often within their own organizational structure.
It was my understanding that the pilots flying these exercises got some sort of citation for having worked with foreign troops. Due to the very American penchant for issuing medals and awards for everything under the sun, this is extremely likely. Additionally, the pilots involved could enter the somewhat unique fact that they had rappelled x amount of troops into their flying logs. Both of these situations would open the door for dialog in which it was stated that foreign troops were conducting training in America.
It was also my understanding that these joint exercises had to receive approval from the United Nations. Don't ask me why. But viewed in certain lighting these exercises could easily be regarded as "the movement of foreign troops onto U.S. soil under the auspices of the UN". We just saw it as cool training with our NATO allies. (So cool in fact, that most guys turned down every opportunity to get the military licenses required to operate military vehicles. Having a license might mean being assigned to drive in the boring "road party" to the training area. Eventually, some soldiers had to be ordered to get military driver's permits!)
In the Fall of 1986 the Lincoln and Welland was tasked with fielding a reconnaissance platoon. This would replace our Armor Defence Platoon and was to be the eyes and ears for the entire organizational grouping to which the regiment belonged. Members of the Canadian Airborne Regiment's Pathfinder Platoon visited Niagara in March of '87 and conducted the training of troops selected for this new role. It wasn't long before our Recce Platoon was doing night time insertions in the Allegheny and other areas, with the pilots using night vision goggles, flying without lights, and practicing "deception landings" in which they simulated landings at several different landing areas. The amount of helicopter rappelling increased substantially.
The loud arrival of these darkened helicopters at night, followed by the presence of foreign soldiers around town and in popular nature areas the next morning provided ready ingredients for the recipe of rumor. Added to the mix was the fact that often the civilians who saw us confusedly thought we were American Army "Green Berets" because of our headdress, strange firearms and different uniforms. Not knowing that most members of the Canadian army wore green berets, we were asked many times "how long we had been in Special Forces." In many cases when it was explained that we were Canadians, eyebrows were raised. [Predictably, if it was a pretty (sometimes even not so pretty) Pennsylvanian girl doing the asking, some of our guys may have been in no hurry to correct the mistaken identity!]
Even support staff at the air base from which we often flew were sometimes confused. This confusion may have been self-induced by the American staff themselves in order to create bragging rights to having "worked with Special Forces". Credence to this theory is evidenced by an event that happened while delayed from flying out for a time due to bad weather. There was not much to do except sleep or wander around the huge hanger that held the 42nd's headquarters, repair and training sections. We had a number of members from the Lorne Scots Regiment with us on this exercise. Although a Canadian regiment, the "horny lornys" wore traditional Scottish headdress (Balmorals) as their field cap. They were asked by everybody from the janitor to the cafeteria staff if they had come from Scotland to learn SF techniques from the Canadian "Rangers"! This unintended ribbing got so bad that one of the Lornes' asked if he could borrow my beret to power trip with. Sorry laddie--no dice!
Lastly, there is at least one aviation unit in the American armed forces that is equipped with genuinely black painted helicopters and they make no effort to hide the fact. I believe they are used for covert and Special Forces missions during wartime. Creative scenarios to alleviate the boredom and repetitiveness created by always training on the same military base may have (nay--probably) led the commanders of this unit to seek out creative new places to play.
World domination cannot be achieved with just one unit of black choppers. Besides--if the black helicopters are flying missions against domestic targets, what exactly are they doing? Hard evidence of any sinister goings-on is scant or nonexistent. If the Masons were going around snatching militia members in helicopters, wouldn't the friends and neighbors of these people know about it? Similarly, assaulting and destroying Patriot Radio transmitter sites is something that would be pretty hard to keep under wraps.
Can the flying movements of the Lincoln and Welland Regiment in the 1980's fully explain the black helicopter phenomenon? No. But it did conduct aggressively executed training activities over a large geographical area that often appeared unorthodox and could seriously puzzle bystanders. The flights could easily have been mistaken for activities conducted by the real black helicopters--if they truly exist. Recent strange events in Kingsville, Texas involving allegedly black helicopters plus the police and members of the U.S. military conducted an allegedly simulated raid on the town are very thought provoking, to say the least. The townsfolk were supposedly given no prior warning of the exercise, and several buildings were said to have been damaged when helicopters landed on rooftops. This sure sounds scary, but then again, the whole thing may have been just a benign training ex that went "Triple P" (Piss Poor Planning). I wasn't there so I don't know. Chances are, neither were you. Genuinely scary is the fact that by law (the Posse Comitatus Act) the US military is forbidden from mixing with the police for this sort of thing. (Unless they are laying siege to a church full of women and children over a $200 tax matter, of course.)
Most disturbing of all is the fact that many people who have never seen one of the black-coloured helicopters (real or otherwise) believe sincerely that they exist. Doubly disturbing is that our own governments and the UN have conducted themselves in such a fashion that the possibility of the black choppers existing does not seem so far-fetched. Their fast pace of gun control, high taxation, and other forms of high-handed intrusiveness seem to have no limit and are extremely unsettling.
If the choppers-noir exist, and if the UN is really going to attempt world dominance, they better be very very careful. Especially in the woods around the New York and Pennsylvania border. The following anecdote illustrates why: Our regiment's comings and goings became so commonplace around Allegheny that the Park Rangers (NYSPP) gave up trying to keep track of us. One day, my recce det came out of the woods onto a road (we were on a navigation exercise--non tactical, but with rifles) just as a Ranger vehicle came by. The officer screeched to a halt and explained how glad he was to see us. It seems they had been getting reports of automatic rifle fire in the area for about a week, but now that he had seen us , the gunfire could be explained and he could close his investigation. He smiled, wished us good luck and drove away before I could tell him we had just arrived the night before and that we did not even have blank ammo with us!
Like the old saying goes-- "Never fuck with Indians and hillbillies who own high powered rifles!"
(c) 2000