wing aircraft such as a C-17 or a C-5 can
carry way more, but you can’t put those
anywhere you want, whereas a ‘53’ can
land in the most austere sites.
‘It gives a lot of flexibility to the MAGTF
commander, especially the capability
to move large amounts of people,
combat supplies, and heavy equipment.
It gives the ability to amass combat
power quickly in a single wave. We have
the capability of lifting about 30 pax
[personnel] per aircraft, so depending
on what the MAGTF commander needs,
it’d be simple for us to fly a flight of
four ‘53s’ and insert almost an entire
company in one wave.
‘With that, they can bring a robust
load-out of weapons. We can move a
heavy weapons company with all their
associated munitions and mortars —
that’s no problem for us. If we wanted to,we could come in with a second wave
and bring in their vehicles. There’s a lot of
flexibility with what we can do.’
The CH-53’s capacity is expandable
as well, should the need to carry more
passengers arise. As Baxter explained, ‘We
can take more pax than 30. That’s just how
many seats we have available to us. We
can throw some centerline seats in there
and put more people in the aircraft if we
need to.’ Though movement of personnel
is typically a point-A-to-point-B affair
in which the aircraft touches down in a
landing zone and the marines disembark;
the HMH community trains with ground
units on other methods of exiting the
aircraft. Among these alternatives are
static-line and free-fall parachute jumps,
fast-roping — in which a thick rope is
run from a hovering CH-53 down to the
ground with the marines sliding downit — and helo-casting, where troops jump
off the aircraft’s rear ramp into a body of
water, with the pilot maintaining a slow
forward speed to prevent those entering
the water from being forced under by the
downwash from the rotors.Heavy hauler
Along with moving marines, the ‘Echo’
can carry a variety of cargo inside its
spacious rear compartment. Typically, this
takes the form of pallets of ammunition,
food, bottled water, aircraft parts, or
humanitarian aid.
In addition to its internal capacity,
which is limited more by available space
than weight restrictions, the CH-53E has
a robust external lift capability, being
able to carry loads of up to 36,000lb
(16,330kg) slung underneath the aircraft.
This allows the ‘53’ to emplace theUS NAVY & MARINE CORPS AIR POWER YEARBOOK 2018
MAWTS-1 CH-53E^2928-35 MAWTS-1 C.indd 29 31/05/2018 15:25