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Con Ops
Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364 First Osprey Flight: The Phrog Retires
04/26/2015: LtCol. Paul Kopacz, Commanding Officer, Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364 (VMM-364), pilots a MV-22 Osprey at Camp Pendleton, Calif., on 23 April 2015.
This was the first flight for VMM-364 since transitioning from CH-46E Sea Knight’s as Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 364 (HMM-364) and is a milestone event for a transitioning unit to attain a “Safe For Flight” endorsement.
CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. — It’s perhaps a most fitting tribute: The first active-duty Marine Corps operational squadron to get the CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter became the last one to fly it and officially transition to its replacement, the MV-22B Osprey tiltrotor.
That shift happened Thursday during a dual-hatted ceremony at Camp Pendleton, where Marine Medium Helicopter Training Squadron 164 held a change-of-command and redesignation as a tiltrotor, or VMM, squadron.
It marked the end of an era, coming 50 years after the first Sea Knight model, the CH-46A, replaced the UH-34 flying combat missions in Vietnam in 1966.
“It’s bittersweet,” said retired Col. Daniel C. Hahne, who commanded the training squadron from 2002 to 2004. Hanhe was one of 10 former squadron commanders who joined Lt. Col. Gabriel Valdez for the pass-in-review before Valdez handed the squadron’s reins to Lt. Col. Eric Aschenbrenner. Aschenbrenner, a former F/A-18 Hornet jet pilot who transitioned to the MV-22 in 2009, will oversee the squadron of Ospreys as a deploying operational unit.
“How do you capture 50 years of clear awesomeness in 10 minutes? I can’t,” Valdez told the crowd, which included Vietnam veterans, active-duty Marines and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He noted the shiny olive green-painted Phrog — aircrews long have affectionately called them Phrogs, or Battle Phrogs — parked in the hangar.
“That’s going to be the last Marine Corps CH-46, ever,” he said.
That helicopter, designated by Bureau Number 153369, is one of the squadron’s last two CH-46E Sea Knights that will take their final flights from the flightline in a few days.
It will see a new chapter when it becomes a static display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Va.
A patch worn by Capt. Brett Bishop commemorates the last CH-46E squadron mission with Japan-based 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit. US Naval Institute Photo
The Phrog saw combat for the first time in the jungles of Vietnam in 1965 and again a decade later, when it picked up the last Marines off the U.S. embassy rooftop in Saigon on April 30, 1975.
The other helicopter, BUNO 155306, retains the light gray paint of the Marine Corps’ operational fleet and will join dozens of other Phrogs in long-term preservation, parked at the military’s “Boneyard” at Davis-Monthan Air Base in Arizona.
The final piece of the Marine Corps’ transition to the MV-22 Osprey as the backbone of its medium-lift transport fleet will come later this year with the redesignation of the last reserve squadron, HMM-774, to VMM.
But even as the Marine Corps long ago turned its attention to the MV-22, the venerable CH-46 is retiring with plenty of meat on its bones.
The Phrogs sent to the desert “are in the best shape of their lives,” Valdez told the audience, which included Maj. Gen. Michael A. Rocco, who commands the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing, the Marine Corps’ West Coast-based wing at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station in San Diego. “
They are combat ready. If and when they are needed again…, these aircraft would be up in the air in no time.”
Valdez gave kudos to the squadron Marines, nicknamed the “Knightriders,” who he said remained dedicated and adhered to the combat mindset even as “we dropped the H and added a V.”
Aschenbrenner, the incoming CO, reminded the Marines that while taking on the Osprey, they “are all still Knightriders.
We are going to write another chapter… like when the 46 replaced the 34…..”
