{"id":20038925,"date":"2026-09-04T11:25:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T09:25:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/piasecki-pa-97-helistat-lakehurst-1986-crash\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T14:51:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:51:12","slug":"accident-du-piasecki-pa-97-helistat-lakehurst-1986","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/fr\/piasecki-pa-97-helistat-lakehurst-1986-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Piasecki Helistat : Quatre h\u00e9licopt\u00e8res boulonn\u00e9s \u00e0 un dirigeable"},"content":{"rendered":"<style>.et_pb_title_container h1.entry-title { padding-top: 40px !important; }<\/style>\n<!-- mfsh:top -->\n\n<style>\n.mfsh-trigger{display:inline-flex;align-items:center;gap:10px;height:44px;padding:0 18px;margin:0 0 26px;border:2px solid 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It was 343 feet long. It was a Navy blimp with four helicopters bolted underneath it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>On 1 July it lifted a few feet off the ground, started to shake, and came apart.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f5f5f5;padding:20px 24px;margin:26px 0;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 10px;font-weight:700;font-size:17px;color:#0d1117\">Quick Facts<\/p><table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-size:15px\"><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Aircraft<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Piasecki PA-97 Helistat, registration N1897Z<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Concept<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Hybrid heavy-lift: helium buoyancy plus four helicopter rotors<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Envelope<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Retired U.S. Navy Goodyear ZPG-2W, about 1,000,000 cubic feet<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Helicopters<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">Four surplus Sikorsky H-34J, Wright R-1820 radials, about 1,525 hp each<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Length<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">343 ft (104.57 m)<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Height<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">about 113 ft<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Target payload<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">25 tons of timber, five to six miles<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Customer<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">U.S. Forest Service, contract administered by the U.S. Navy<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Contract<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">$10.7 million, January 1980; programme estimated at about $25 million<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>First free flight<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">26 April 1986<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Destroyed<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">1 July 1986, Lakehurst, New Jersey<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Casualties<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">One killed, three seriously injured, one slightly<\/td><\/tr><tr><td style=\"padding:5px 12px 5px 0;color:#555;vertical-align:top;width:38%\"><strong>Total flight time<\/strong><\/td><td style=\"padding:5px 0;color:#222\">5 hours<\/td><\/tr><\/table><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The problem it was built to solve<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The United States Forest Service had 20 million acres of commercial forest classed as marginal \u2014 too steep, too remote, no roads. Getting timber out meant either building a road, at around a million dollars for six miles, or flying it out with a heavy-lift helicopter, which was expensive and limited.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Frank Piasecki had an answer, and he had been carrying it around for a very long time. He filed a patent for a combined balloon-and-helicopter lifting unit in March 1958. It was granted in November 1961. Then, as one recent account puts it, absolutely nothing happened with it for over a decade.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The idea is elegant on paper. A blimp big enough to lift the aircraft\u2019s own weight, but not the cargo. Helicopters to lift the cargo and to provide the control a blimp does not have. Static lift and dynamic lift acting through the same point. In theory, you get a machine that can hover with 25 tons on the hook without needing an engine large enough to hold all of it up.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/pa-97-helistat-four-helicopters-blimp.jpg\" alt=\"The PA-97 Helistat, four H-34 helicopters attached to a blimp envelope\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">Four Sikorsky H-34J helicopters, tail sections removed, mounted two per side on a tubular aluminium frame beneath a million cubic feet of helium. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Built from what was lying around<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Piasecki won the contract in January 1980 partly on price and partly on speed: the company said it could deliver in two years where others wanted five, and it proposed making extensive use of surplus government equipment to keep the cost down.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>So the envelope was a ZPG-2W airborne-early-warning blimp gas bag that had been crated at Lakehurst since the Navy shut down its lighter-than-air operations around 1961. The helicopters were four surplus Navy H-34Js, piston-engined machines already long out of service, with their tail sections removed. They were mounted two per side on a tubular aluminium frame around the centre of buoyancy.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>One pilot, in the left-rear cockpit, flew the entire thing. Flight engineers occupied the other three. Pitch and roll came from differential collective pitch across the four rotors; yaw from differential cyclic tilt; thrust from tilting the discs. All of it mechanically interconnected. No fly-by-wire.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The undercarriage was four freely castering twin-wheel bogies. They had no shimmy dampers, no brakes and no steering. Remember that.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">The warnings<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>They started early. A General Accounting Office report of 2 June 1981 is one of the more quotable documents in the history of American procurement.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #d32f2f;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;Fundamental acquisition management principles that should have been applied in the Helistat program\u2019s development have not been applied.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>U.S. General Accounting Office<\/strong> &mdash; report MASAD-81-31 on the Helistat programme, 2 June 1981<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The GAO had asked four forest industry associations and thirty-two potential private users what they thought. Their overall assessment of the concept was recorded as poor. Eleven said weather and wind would ground it much of the time. Thirty-three preferred cable systems or conventional heavy-lift helicopters. Exactly one was willing to contribute money.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The GAO also noted that the Navy contract administrators said they were hamstrung in getting the data they needed to judge the engineering adequacy and safety of the vehicle being built, and that the Forest Service had let the contractor begin fabrication concurrently with design.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Navy, NASA and FAA officials criticised the workmanship on the interconnecting structure during construction. One Navy engineer was quoted in blunter terms.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #1565c0;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;Slide-rule engineering in an age when everyone else is using computers. You just don\u2019t design aircraft quickly that way.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Louis Berman<\/strong> &mdash; U.S. Navy engineer, criticising the Helistat programme during construction<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\" style=\"margin:0 0 24px;width:100%\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2026\/09\/piasecki-heli-stat-hybrid-airship.jpg\" alt=\"Piasecki Heli-Stat hybrid airship\" style=\"width:100%;height:auto;max-width:100%;display:block\"><figcaption style=\"font-size:13px;color:#777;text-align:center;margin-top:6px;font-style:italic\">The Helistat at Lakehurst. Piasecki called it \"a small version of what could be accomplished in the future, where payloads from 60 to 200 tons are possible.\" Photo: Wikimedia Commons.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\r\n\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">1 July 1986<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>It flew free for the first time on 26 April 1986. The vectored-thrust airship patent Piasecki had filed in 1979 was granted on 27 May. Five weeks after that, on the evening of 1 July, the Helistat completed a hover test successfully and landed.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>A power loss was noted on the number three helicopter, so the test was terminated and the mooring mast called for. Then the wind shifted.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The NTSB\u2019s narrative of what followed is worth reading exactly as written:<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p><em>\u201cPrior to re-mooring a wind shift caused an uncommanded left turn which the pilot could not control with the flight controls. With a tailwind, no wheel brakes or ground steering a takeoff was attempted. The four main landing gear which had no shimmy dampeners started to shimmy. The four helicopters started to react to the shimmy with ground resonance. As the Helistat finally lifted off, the four individual helicopters broke off and fell to the ground.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_7jENWKgMPY\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Footage of the Helistat\u2019s last minute at Lakehurst.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>One rotor cut into the gasbag on the way down. One pilot, aged 58, was killed. Three other crew were seriously injured, one slightly, and a base firefighter was also hurt. Frank Piasecki, then 66, watched it burn.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The power loss on number three was eventually traced to a missing throttle linkage correlation pin. Why the pin was missing was never determined.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Ground resonance, and why four rotors made it worse<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>Ground resonance is a helicopter\u2019s own private nightmare. If the rotor blades bunch unevenly around the disc while the aircraft is in contact with the ground, the resulting out-of-balance force can couple with the natural rocking frequency of the aircraft on its landing gear. Each cycle feeds the next. A machine can tear itself apart in seconds.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The defences are well understood: properly damped blade lag hinges, and properly damped landing gear. The Helistat had four rotor systems, a large flexible frame connecting them, and undercarriage bogies with no shimmy dampers at all.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/CyM2RplP6CU\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>What ground resonance is, and why it destroys helicopters so quickly.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<h2 style=\"padding-top:22px\">Afterwards<\/h2>\r\n\r\n<p>The Forest Service did not try again. A spokeswoman told UPI the day after that testing had already dragged on for years beyond what it was supposed to and that, with the aircraft destroyed, there were no plans to resurrect it.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>Piasecki\u2019s own response, delivered through a company spokeswoman, was almost defiant.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f8f9fa;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:20px 22px;margin:18px 0 24px;font-size:16px;line-height:1.7;display:flex;gap:20px;align-items:flex-start\"><div><em>&ldquo;The cost of progress is pretty costly. We\u2019ve been through this before. So has every other aircraft company.&rdquo;<\/em><div style=\"margin-top:10px;font-size:14px;color:#555\"><strong>Floss Piazza<\/strong> &mdash; spokeswoman for Piasecki Aircraft Corporation, quoted by UPI the day after the crash<\/div><\/div><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>There is an odd footnote. That same year, 1986, President Reagan awarded Frank Piasecki the National Medal of Technology.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The patent expired in 2003. SkyHook International and Boeing then proposed the JHL-40, a heavy-lift hybrid built on much the same logic, and were ready to start construction in 2008 when the credit crisis killed it. Lockheed Martin\u2019s LMH-1 and Hybrid Air Vehicles\u2019 Airlander have kept the hybrid-lift idea alive since, without anyone yet cracking the heavy-lift job the Helistat was built for.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:56.25%;height:0;overflow:hidden;margin:24px 0\"><iframe class=\"skip-lazy\" data-no-lazy=\"1\" loading=\"eager\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ftlilRMbCTA\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;border:0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>The modern version of the same idea \u2014 hybrid airships for cargo into places with no runways.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<p>The Helistat remains the only American helistat ever to fly. It managed five hours in total. Whether the concept was sound and the execution was not, or whether it was always going to end this way, is a question nobody has been willing to spend the money to answer since.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n<style>.mfq{margin:34px 0 8px}.mfq h2{font:26px\/1.3 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117;padding-top:22px;margin:0 0 6px}.mfq .qa details{border-top:1px solid #5C91FF;margin:0;padding:0}.mfq .qa details:last-of-type{border-bottom:1px solid #e2e7ee}.mfq .qa summary{cursor:pointer;list-style:none;display:flex;justify-content:space-between;align-items:center;gap:16px;padding:22px 26px;font:18px\/1.7 \"Gilroy semiBold\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#0d1117}.mfq .qa summary::-webkit-details-marker{display:none}.mfq .qa summary::after{content:\"+\";font:24px Helvetica,sans-serif;color:#3568e0;flex:0 0 auto}.mfq .qa details[open] summary::after{content:\"\\2013\"}.mfq .qa details:hover summary{color:#3568e0}.mfq .qa .a{font:16px\/1.7 \"Gilroy regular\",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;color:#454e5e;padding:0 26px 24px}.mfq .qa .a a{color:#3568e0}@media(max-width:680px){.mfq .qa summary{padding:18px 14px;font-size:17px}.mfq .qa .a{padding:0 14px 20px}}<\/style>\r\n\r\n\r\n<section class=\"mfq\"><h2>Frequently Asked Questions<\/h2><div class=\"qa\"><details open><summary>What was the Piasecki PA-97 Helistat?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">An experimental American heavy-lift aircraft built by bolting four surplus Sikorsky H-34J helicopters to an aluminium framework beneath a retired U.S. Navy ZPG-2W blimp envelope filled with helium. At 343 feet long it was, by its builder\u2019s claim, the largest aircraft in the world at the time.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What was the Helistat supposed to do?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Log steep, roadless forest. The U.S. Forest Service wanted a machine that could lift about 25 tons of timber \u2014 a truckload \u2014 up to five or six miles out of terrain where building a road would have cost around a million dollars for six miles. Half the buoyancy came from the helium, the rest from the rotors.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Who paid for it?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The U.S. Forest Service, with the Naval Air Development Center acting as technical representative and contract administrator under an interagency agreement of September 1979. A sole-source contract worth $10.7 million went to Piasecki Aircraft in January 1980, against a total programme estimate of around $25 million. Published figures for what it eventually cost range from about $31 million to $40 million.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>How was the Helistat flown?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">One pilot flew the whole machine from the cockpit of the left-rear helicopter, with flight engineers in the other three. Pitch and roll came from differential collective pitch across the four rotors, yaw from differential cyclic tilt, and thrust from cyclic tilt; in forward flight rudder-vators on the blimp\u2019s tail added control. The controls were mechanically interconnected.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What happened to the Helistat?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">It was destroyed at Lakehurst, New Jersey on 1 July 1986. After a hover test it had landed and was waiting for the mooring mast when a wind shift caused an uncommanded left turn the pilot could not correct. With a tailwind, no wheel brakes and no ground steering, he attempted a take-off. The undamped landing-gear bogies began to shimmy, the rotors coupled into ground resonance, and as the aircraft lifted off all four helicopters broke away from the frame.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Who was killed in the Helistat crash?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">One pilot, aged 58 according to the NTSB report, which does not name him; secondary accounts name him but disagree on the spelling. Three other crew members were seriously injured and one slightly. A Lakehurst base firefighter was also reported hurt.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>What did the NTSB find?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">The probable causes were a disconnected throttle linkage on the number three helicopter \u2014 a correlation pin was missing and the NTSB never determined why \u2014 and inadequate flight control and design. Contributing factors listed were the absence of a landing-gear brake system, the absence of ground steering, main landing gear vibration, rotor system vibration, the tailwind, and the decision to attempt a running take-off.<\/div><\/details><details><summary>Did anything come of the concept?<\/summary><div class=\"a\">Not directly. The Forest Service abandoned the programme immediately. Frank Piasecki\u2019s 1979 vectored-thrust airship patent, granted five weeks before the crash, expired in 2003, after which SkyHook International and Boeing proposed the JHL-40 heavy-lift hybrid; it was ready to begin construction in 2008 and died in the financial crisis. The PA-97 remains the only American helistat ever to fly.<\/div><\/details><\/div><\/section>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@type\":\"FAQPage\",\"mainEntity\":[{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Piasecki PA-97 Helistat?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"An experimental American heavy-lift aircraft built by bolting four surplus Sikorsky H-34J helicopters to an aluminium framework beneath a retired U.S. Navy ZPG-2W blimp envelope filled with helium. At 343 feet long it was, by its builder\u2019s claim, the largest aircraft in the world at the time.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What was the Helistat supposed to do?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Log steep, roadless forest. The U.S. Forest Service wanted a machine that could lift about 25 tons of timber \u2014 a truckload \u2014 up to five or six miles out of terrain where building a road would have cost around a million dollars for six miles. Half the buoyancy came from the helium, the rest from the rotors.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who paid for it?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The U.S. Forest Service, with the Naval Air Development Center acting as technical representative and contract administrator under an interagency agreement of September 1979. A sole-source contract worth $10.7 million went to Piasecki Aircraft in January 1980, against a total programme estimate of around $25 million. Published figures for what it eventually cost range from about $31 million to $40 million.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"How was the Helistat flown?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"One pilot flew the whole machine from the cockpit of the left-rear helicopter, with flight engineers in the other three. Pitch and roll came from differential collective pitch across the four rotors, yaw from differential cyclic tilt, and thrust from cyclic tilt; in forward flight rudder-vators on the blimp\u2019s tail added control. The controls were mechanically interconnected.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What happened to the Helistat?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"It was destroyed at Lakehurst, New Jersey on 1 July 1986. After a hover test it had landed and was waiting for the mooring mast when a wind shift caused an uncommanded left turn the pilot could not correct. With a tailwind, no wheel brakes and no ground steering, he attempted a take-off. The undamped landing-gear bogies began to shimmy, the rotors coupled into ground resonance, and as the aircraft lifted off all four helicopters broke away from the frame.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Who was killed in the Helistat crash?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"One pilot, aged 58 according to the NTSB report, which does not name him; secondary accounts name him but disagree on the spelling. Three other crew members were seriously injured and one slightly. A Lakehurst base firefighter was also reported hurt.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"What did the NTSB find?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"The probable causes were a disconnected throttle linkage on the number three helicopter \u2014 a correlation pin was missing and the NTSB never determined why \u2014 and inadequate flight control and design. Contributing factors listed were the absence of a landing-gear brake system, the absence of ground steering, main landing gear vibration, rotor system vibration, the tailwind, and the decision to attempt a running take-off.\"}},{\"@type\":\"Question\",\"name\":\"Did anything come of the concept?\",\"acceptedAnswer\":{\"@type\":\"Answer\",\"text\":\"Not directly. The Forest Service abandoned the programme immediately. Frank Piasecki\u2019s 1979 vectored-thrust airship patent, granted five weeks before the crash, expired in 2003, after which SkyHook International and Boeing proposed the JHL-40 heavy-lift hybrid; it was ready to begin construction in 2008 and died in the financial crisis. The PA-97 remains the only American helistat ever to fly.\"}}]}<\/script><p><em>Sources: NTSB Aviation Investigation Final Report NYC86FHD01; U.S. General Accounting Office report MASAD-81-31 (2 June 1981); U.S. Forest Service Heli-Stat fact sheet; Piasecki Aircraft Corporation; Peter Lobner, Modern Airships (Lyncean Group); Forest History Society; UPI, 2 July 1986; TIME, 14 July 1986; Wikipedia; Wikimedia Commons.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<!-- mfsh:bottom -->\n\n<button type=\"button\" class=\"mfsh-trigger mfsh-bottom\" data-mfsh-placement=\"bottom\" aria-haspopup=\"dialog\"><svg><use href=\"#mfsh-i-share\"\/><\/svg>Share this story<\/button>\n\n<!-- \/mfsh:bottom -->\n\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<div style=\"background:#f0f4ff;border-left:4px solid #5C91FF;padding:16px 20px;margin:32px 0 8px\"><p style=\"margin:0 0 8px;font-weight:600;color:#333\">Related Posts<\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/piasecki-h-21-flying-banana-tandem-rotor-helicopter\/\">The Flying Banana That Went to War<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/mil-v-12-mi-12-largest-helicopter-ever-built-record\/\">Mil V-12: The Largest Helicopter Ever Built, and Its Unbeaten Record<\/a><\/p><p style=\"margin:4px 0\"><a href=\"https:\/\/migflug.com\/afterburner\/kamov-ka-22-vintokryl-convertiplane-records-crashes\/\">Kamov Ka-22 Vintokryl: The Soviet Record Breaker That Killed Nine<\/a><\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Le Service des for\u00eats des \u00c9tats-Unis a financ\u00e9 l&#039;installation de quatre h\u00e9licopt\u00e8res exc\u00e9dentaires sous un dirigeable de la Marine mis hors service afin de transporter des grumes hors des for\u00eats inaccessibles par la route. L&#039;appareil a vol\u00e9 pendant cinq heures avant de se d\u00e9sint\u00e9grer \u00e0 Lakehurst.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":20038081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[666,664],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20038925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history-and-legends","category-military-aviation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Piasecki Helistat: Four Helicopters Bolted to a Blimp | MiGFlug<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Piasecki Helistat put four surplus helicopters under a retired Navy blimp to lift logs. 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