HELICOPTER CAMOUFLAGE 1975 [Main Title]

An RAF training film demonstrating the use of camouflage kits for Puma and Wessex helicopters on active service.

START 10:00:00 The film begins by declaring, "We will never have enough helicopters for our needs. Therefore it is important to protect those we have by using every means available to us. One way of doing this is to camouflage our helicopters whenever and wherever operational circumstances allow" and proceeds to illustrate how an RAF Puma HC Mk 1 helicopter in an operational area can be concealed from chance detection by a low-flying enemy aircraft (illustrated here by an RAF SEPECAT Jaguar GR.1 fighter-bomber).

10:01:16 The film shows two separate camouflage kits, one for use at some distance from the frontline, the other just behind it. The first one demonstrated, the Rear Concealment Set, is stowed on board a short wheelbase Landrover and 1-ton trailer and can be erected by four men in thirty five minutes before the helicopter for which it is intended arrives.

10:06:16 A Puma comes in to land and is quickly hidden behind two large screens of camouflage netting seventy feet long, forty feet wide and twenty one feet high pulled tightly over the fuselage. Its four big rotor blades are covered up with long socks of green synthetic material. The fibres used in the Rear Concealment Set offer protection from enemy reconnaissance carried out visually, photographically and with infra-red devices. In the event of the deployment by the enemy of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons, it can be decontaminated with water.

10:09:15 The set can be dismantled in thirty seconds to allow the Puma to take off again. At a helicopter landing zone much closer to the frontline, the Puma's three-man crew deploy the Forward Concealment Set which can be set up in just twelve minutes. The camouflage material, consisting of large green sheets with large irregular perforations and scrim netting, is suspended from two of the four helicopter's main rotor blades. The other main blades are covered with the camouflaged rotor blade socks. The helicopter's shiny perspex cockpit is concealed under a separate camouflage sheet.

10:12:15 The Forward Concealment Set, weighing less than one hundred pounds, can be dismantled by the three-man crew in under six minutes and then stowed inside the Puma. Over shots of the helicopter in flight, the film concludes by stating, "Helicopter camouflage can be difficult but with careful choice of location, this equipment can significantly reduce the risk of random sighting by the enemy."

END 10:13:21

16mm