Originally Posted by
Hueypilot
I worked with a Army dude that said they had pitched the idea to the USAF. The Army would build dirt LZs with their engineers if we'd fly to them and deliver, thus cutting out the need for a bunch of convoys. The USAF declined, stating that landing on dirt would result in too many bent airplanes.
I mentioned it to an O-6 I knew and he also had heard of that idea, and agreed with the USAF's premise. Yet he had no problem with our crews coming home from 120 day vacations doing nothing but landing on 10,000' paved runways to get their currency re-hacked on our 3,000' dirt LZ. I'm quite sure the LZs the Army would have built would have been longer and wider than anything we train on back home.
It's a travesty we never did that...I imagine a few Army and Marine troops would still be alive had we been able to deliver their supplies and people via airplane to their own LZ.
I lived at a little FOB (Salerno, 2002-2003) with a dirt strip and we got a good bit of our everyday needs via CH-47's and we also had C-130's landing on the dirt strip. It was great fun watching the whole evolution complete with ERO's. Really broke up the monotony while sitting QRF on those 120*F days when the bad folks didn't want to play.
I can't remember the length of the 'runway'. It was maintained by US Army engineers who worked a good bit. The used to spread some kind of compound to keep the dust down... 'elephant snot' I think they called it.