Hughes TH-55 Osage Helicopter Flight Training - 1968

This is a Super 8 film by Don Eaton, taken during flight school at the US Army Primary Helicopter Center at Fort Wolters in Mineral Wells, Texas (ORWAC 68-22, the Blue Hats). His initial training was in the Hughes TH-55 Osage shown here, then he graduated to the Bell UH-1 at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah before shipping out and piloting Hueys in Vietnam. The film includes about 9 minutes of footage taken during training flights (including cross-country), and should be familiar territory to any Vietnam-era helicopter pilots who trained in the late sixties. It is bouncy in places, as one might expect, and has not been edited except to remove the initial hover practice. There is a brief cameo of a Bell 47, and near the end there are some beautiful shots of a flight of four TH-55s. Don's historical footage from May-June 1968 was scanned at 1080p by Harbor Digitizing of Friday Harbor, Washington. https://harbordigitizing.com