f-stop: Russian Photo-Op

'Severomorsk' conducts helo recovery operations

Frequent readers will know that I have long held a fascination for the ships and aircraft of other navies; the sight of an unfamiliar rig or unknown flag stirs my blood in a way that warships of my own Navy no longer can. I reach for binoculars and begin picking-out details that might lead to an identification, then head for the bridge's copy of 'Janes' Fighting Ships' to search for a match.

Helix '53' takes a good look at Laramie

If I may say so, I'm pretty good at this. I've had quite a bit of practice over nearly four decades at sea, after all.

Here we have a recent encounter here in the Gulf with the Russian destroyer Severomorsk and his* 'Helix' helicopter. This was an easy "I.D.", for though I'd never actually seen one of these 'Udaloy-class' ASW ships before I've spent a lot of time studying the Russian Navy and it's warships, and it is a very distinctive design.

Shorts and a t-shirt...it must be Casual Day in the Russian Navy

Severomorsk passed several miles from Laramie, which was a bit of a disappointment to me as I would have loved to have seen and photographed him more closely, but as a consolation the destroyer's helicopter came quite a bit closer and in fact flew around Laramie for a few minutes. This was quite an enjoyable air-show, as ship and helo exchanged waved greetings and took snapshots of each other.

As you can see, the 'Helix' looks quite different from Western helicopters, but it's counter-rotating rotor system is actually quite efficient, doing away with the balky transmission system and tail-rotor of more familiar rotary-wing aircraft.

Das Vidanya!



* Ships in the Russian Navy are referred to using the male pronoun.