This is a Bell AH-1 “Cobra” helicopter.
It was commonly used as an attack helicopter during the Vietnam war. I would like for you to observe that it has two seats: one for the pilot and one for the co-pilot. It has no more seating inside. It is only designed to carry two people, plus armament and ammo. This will become significant in a little bit.
On Monday, Capt. Larry L. Taylor (United States Army – ret.) was awarded the Medal of Honor for actions on June 18, 1968.
This is one of the oddest hyena watches I’ve ever done. One reason is that I’ve never seen someone accused of “illegal registration of a helicopter”. (As we will see, there’s slightly more to the story than that.)
The city of Anaheim sold land to the Los Angeles Angels for a new stadium. There’s already been one issue with the land sale violating California affordable housing law.
Now, the state attorney general has asked a court to put the deal on hold. Why?
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Okay, so we’ve got obstruction of justice and witness tampering, as well as bribery. I’m guessing the false statements probably involve lying to the Feds. As for the fraud:
Where does the helicopter come in?
The evidence, according to the affidavit, also showed Sidhu pursued an Arizona address to register his helicopter, despite the fact that he lived in Anaheim and based the helicopter out of Chino.
Had he registered the helicopter in California, he would have owed $15,888 in sales tax. Had he registered the helicopter in Arizona, he would have owed a $1,025 vehicle tax.
I’d tend to call that “tax fraud” myself, though I also have trouble throwing stones at someone who tries to lower their tax bill (especially in California).
It should be noted that:
The other odd aspect of this story is that I got tipped off to it by Field of Schemes. Neil deMause is a little more to the left than I’d like, but we find common ground in being opposed to giving tax dollars to sports franchises. This is the first actual political corruption story I’ve ever picked up from him, so take a bow, Mr. deMause.
Edited to add 5/18: Well, we have an actual indictment. But not against Mayor Sidhu: against Todd Ament, the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.
According to federal officials, Ament – with the assistance of an unnamed political consultant who federal officials describe as a partner at a national public relations firm – devised a scheme to launder proceeds intended for the Chamber through the PR firm into Ament’s bank account, authorities say.
Federal officials say Ament and the PR consultant defrauded a cannabis company that believed it was paying $225,000 for a task force that would craft favorable legislation regarding cannabis.
The way I’m reading this, the charges against Mr. Ament aren’t directly related to Mayor Sidhu or the land deal: but the Feds had Mr. Ament nailed on those charges, and used them as leverage to flip Mr. Ament, who is strongly believed (based on poor document redaction) to be “Cooperating Witness #2” in the Sidhu affidavit.
Time for some more true crime. Or “crime” in this first case.
At the end of WWII, some of Hitler’s SS men made off with an estimated $130 million in Nazi gold.
“SS Bank Heist – Berlin 1945”.
Bonus #1: Well, this is interesting. Somebody posted a full episode of the series “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories” (with Pernell Roberts) to the ‘Tube.
“The Hijacking of TWA Flight 541”. I picked up on this because it is one part of a story I find kind of interesting. Back in 1978, a 17-year-old girl named Robin Oswald hijacked a plane. Why? She was trying to get her mother’s boyfriend, Garrett Brock Trapnell, out of the Federal prison in Marion.
Why didn’t her mom do it? Because her mom was dead: Barbara Ann Oswald tried to break Trapnell out of Marion by hijacking a helicopter. When the chopper landed in the prison yard, the pilot grabbed the gun and killed Ms. Oswald.
The whole Garrett Trapnell story is really kind of crazy. Beyond the helicopter escape, he was a bank robber, con man, aircraft hijacker…and bigamist. There’s a book about him that I’d love to find: The Fox Is Crazy, Too (no affiliate link, because Amazon prices are insane).
(And for those of you concerned about me exploiting a 17-year-old: she was tried as a juvenile and did minimal time. Robin Oswald actually appears briefly in shadow talking about Trapnell’s hold over her, and how she was a dumb kid at the time: Roberts mentions that she’d led a “productive life” since then.)
I miss this series. It was tight and informative: I find “The FBI Files” to sometimes be a little on the long side. Somebody needs to release this series on DVD, or get streaming rights.
Bonus #2: I miss the series so much, how about another episode? This one is about one of those product tampering scares from the 1980s. But there’s a twist…
Ever hear of Camp Century?
The US military had a clever idea back in the 1950s: let’s build missile launch sites under the ice in Greenland. That project was called “Project Iceworm” and was secret: as a cover story, and to test the feasibility of this idea, Camp Century was built.
You can imagine this was a massive logistical operation. Especially when you consider that everything had to be hauled across the ice from Thule AFB, 150 miles away.
“Camp Century, The City Under The Ice”.
Spoiler: it turns out that the ice sheet shifts. A lot. Which makes missile bases under the ice really not feasible.
Bonus: from the same source, the Charlie Dean Archives, “Faces of Rescue”, documenting a typical rescue mission for an Air Force pilot shot down over Vietnam.
Travel Thursday!
Today, a couple of exotic destinations. “Wings Over The West Indies” from our good friends at Pan Am. What makes this interesting is that it is from the 1940s, and features the Sikorsky S-40 flying boat.
And, for a little dose of something slightly more recent and in color…”Wings to Yugoslavia”, also from Pan Am, but this time dating to the 1960s.
One more fun one: “Up and Over”, a promo film made by Sikorsky promoting Los Angeles Airways (LAA). LAA provided helicopter service from various points around LA to the airports and to Disneyland. They also carried mail.
The YouTube notes mention that they went out of business in 1971 after an acquisition with Golden West Airlines failed. What the notes don’t mention is that they had two bad crashes almost back to back (May 22, 1968 and August 14, 1968) that killed a total of 44 people. Which may have been a contributing factor…
Today:
“The CH-47A Chinook In Vietnam”. This is allegedly a corporate promo film for the Chinook, but I’m not sure it is complete.
Bonus #1: From the 1950s and those wonderful folks at Shell Oil, “The History of the Helicopter”.
Bonus #2: “Birth of the Bell Helicopter”, a Bell corporate promo/history film.