Gyrodyne Co. of America
In 1946 Peter Papadokus formed the Gyrodyne Company of America to develop a rotorcraft that had the qualities of both a fixed‑wing aircraft and a rotorcraft. Gyrodone designed its Rotorcycle to compete for a US Navy contract for a small, portable helicopter capable of carrying one man and his equipment over a short distance. It could be folded into a small package that could be air‑dropped and assembled by one man under combat conditions. The fuselage was an aluminum tubular structure to which were attached the engine, tricycle landing gear, and all necessary equipment. The program terminated after the Navy and Marine Corps built and evaluated some 15 XRON and YRON test helicopters.
Gyrodyne transformed a derivative of the Rotorcycle into a remote-controlled torpedo craft for the Navy’s DASH (Drone Antisubmarine Helicopter) program. They replaced the original Porsche reciprocating engine with a small Boeing turbine in the DSN‑1/QH‑50 and fitted skid landing gear so that it could take off and land from the deck of a ship. The company built over 600 QH-50C’s for the U.S. Navy, mainly in the 1960’s.
The unusual co-axial rotor system provided torque cancellation in a very compact design, which is especially important on board a ship. During a DASH mission, the QH‑50 drone was “piloted” during takeoff and landing by the destroyer’s DASH officer from a central console adjacent to the destroyer’s flight deck. Control was transferred after takeoff to an officer in the ship’s Combat Information Center, who “flew” the QH‑50 by radar to the suspected location of the enemy submarine, as indicated by the destroyer’s sonar, and dropped its payload of one Mk‑46 or two Mk‑44 torpedoes. Effective range was thus limited to the destroyer’s radar horizon. Ideally, the drone would then be flown back and recovered aboard the destroyer, but many of the QH‑50’s were lost during this phase of the mission. This was generally due either to the sudden change in the configuration of the helicopter after the payload was dropped, or simply to the inexperience of the DASH officer.
Most QH‑50’s were withdrawn from service long before their destroyer platforms, although some were used as unmanned reconnaissance drones in the Vietnam War and a few were used into the early 1980’s as target drones for programs such as the U.S. Navy’s Submarine Air Defense (SUBAD) missile. Over 500 QH‑50’s in four different variants were built for the U.S. Navy, with several delivered for service with the Japanese Maritime Self‑Defense Force. A few QH‑50C drones were still in use in the U.S. as targets in the early 1980’s.
The GH‑50C on display was manufactured October 5, 1964, and is serial no. DS‑1190. The number on the tail is DS‑1082.
| Aircraft Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Rotor Diameter | 20 ft |
| Fuselage Length | 12 ft 11 in |
| Maximum Speed | 92 mph |
| Cruise Speed | 58 mph |
| Height | 9 ft 6 in |
| Empty Weight | 1,154 lbs |
| Gross Weight | 2,285 lbs |
| Engine | 300 hp Boeing T50 B08A Turbine |
| Source | Loan from the National Naval Aviation Museum |