The Hind Heist - The Secret US Operation to Steal the Soviet's Top Helicopter
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- Опубликовано: 6 янв 2025
- The top secret US mission to steal the latest Mi-24 Hind gunship in 1988, known as Operation Mount Hope III.
Many thanks to subscriber Cameron Beach for suggesting this great topic.
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Thanks: Steve Ouellette
"stole a Soviet helicopter" would be an awesome thing to have on your resume
Imagine being a Soviet soldier and just seeing your helicopter getting flown away by another helicopter
Once again you have found another historical event that was completely unknown to me. This channel is the best, period. Well done!
Both countries controlled by the same secret society of shit. Cold war was all an act to fleece both sides for trillions.
No pewdeepie is the best
Official channel legenda2020 from Russia . This channel fake
The Cold War was like a bunch of highschoolers pulling pranks on each other.
That's what happens when you leave sensitive equipment behind. The Libyan's should have destroyed the Hind on evacuation, that's hind sight now.
One can only imagine how furious the Soviets were with the Libyans.
Bet they did not send the Libyans a Christmas card that year.
@@bigblue6917 they sent sour borscht
@@bigblue6917 I think you mean Allah card?
To the GULAGS
@@bigblue6917 I bet they never send Libyans a Christmas card since Libyans are mainly Muslims :'D
No Hind left behind.
Favorite comment here
A Hind too far
The Hind is a Soviet/Russia helicoptor. NOT from Federal USA.
@@pentuplove6542 this went way over your head
Pentu Plove Oh wow, I totally didn’t know this!
After all this some private was like "can't we just fly it out"? and his sergeant says "you need to stop using common sense and just follow orders".
little known fact, Hind blades rotate opposite american helicopter blades, making them tricky to fly by american pilots until they get used to it
9:19 a dead bird is just falling through the sky
Incredible! I was working in maintenance at KDHN airport in 1988. I was in charge of keeping the grass cut between all the runways. I got a radio call one day on my tractor that told me to cease and return to the equipment shed. A C-5a landed shortly after and parked on the furthest inactive apron. A large contingency of HEAVILY armed soldiers poured out and stationed up surrounding the C-5. Although it was not unusual to have C-5s, the intense armed security was incredibly odd. Fuel trucks attended the C-5 and refueled the plane. Soldiers filed back in an off they went. Everyone was like WTF?! Days later the word got around the field that inside the C-5 was a captured Russian helicopter. Till this very moment l never knew for sure if it was true, so l always kind of hesitated to tell the story. Now I'm pretty well certain that that was indeed this chopper. Cool. Thanks for posting.
It is boxed & tucked away between the ark of the covenant and the Roswell UFO wreckage
It belongs in a museum...
Lmfao
Wildschwein Jäger so do you! 😬
Now is in the Hangar 51.
Actually, when they were done testing it, they fly it to Ft. Campbell so the whole unit could see it. NSDQ 87-89
I'm just upset it's not called " The hind heist in hindsight."
I used to work in a small country on the west coast of Africa, and their army had a handful of Hinds piloted by Ukrainians. Every now and then they’d do mock attack runs on our hangar. I’m telling you, watching two Hinds appear at tree top level, coming full speed in an attack formation... impressive. Rather terrifying too haha. They’re big machines but are surprisingly maneuverable.
Do you know what they call the Hangar where the Hind is stored . . . . . The Hind Quarters . lol .
10 out of 10 brother
Lmao
😐
*Mission Impossible heist theme song plays*
Mr. Phelps, Mr. Phelps
Mr. Phelps, Mr. Phelps
This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds
This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds
This tape will self-destruct in 5 seconds
@Golden Eagle Nah man, don't be pulling that reverse uno move on me.
The Hind is now in the same hangar as the Ark of the Covenant.
Nobody:
The U.S government: *_I use the helicopter to steal the helicopter_*
I gave you your 1,000th like! As if you care lol.
Is there anything wrong with that? It's quite *unclear* if you're chastising the American goverment or exalting them.
Hans get ze helikopter
Lol
7
"It's in a secret US govt warehouse, hanger 51 I believe" LOL
Who would win:
Virgin Libya
Or
Chad Chad
The Hind was in storage in Hangar 18 located within Area 51, Groom Lake Nevada. My Platoon was aboard 4 CH-46 Sea Knight Helo's. We were ordered there for some specific training in Nov. 1988. We were treated very well by the personnel there and were allowed a brief tour of the Hangar and its' aircraft within. Very educational !!
*U.S.A to Soviet Russia: As you said comrade, its not your helicopter, its our helicopter*
0:44 So advanced, it's even got a cockpit fan for the pilot?
I’ll be back in 6 years when this gets recommended to me
I was a Captain at Ft Rucker in DCD when it got to Cairns. I was amazed at how big the transmission was.
I remember in August of 1990, preparing to deploy to Desert Shield at Fort Hood Texas. A "D" model made some passes over the Barracks at low level to familiarize us with the sound it made and what it looked like.
Soldier of Fortune magazine actually offered $100,000 for an intact Hind and later upped the reward to $1,000,000.
$100,000 would have been more than cheeky actually. Unit cost approaches several dozen million dollars today, which I suppose is still close to $10M in 1980s money. Could be that some rogue crew from a third world could would be interested in performing high treason for $50k each, but it sure would have been the bargain of the century...
Well that hardly seems like sufficient motivation
$100,000 USD in 1980's value was very decent money to a third worlder.
LMAO I remember reading that and telling my dad he should sign up for it he was a pilot flew Chinooks in Vietnam and Cobras in the National Guard. He laughed at the suggestion.
Today we learned that don’t give your stuff to small rebel groups that are just going to leave it laying around everywhere
Yep, both sides did the same mistake.
Well it wasn't they gave it to Libya. =)
I don't think any major power will ever learn that lesson.
Tell that to the Russians, after all they left weapons caches all around Afghanistan when they were invading the country.
The Americans have never learned this lesson.
As a former Chinook pilot, previously hangered right next to the 160th, I approve of this episode. Quite a mission!
"We do not fear the Soviets... But we fear their helecopters".
~Afgan Fighter, late 70's~
Nothing like engaging in a little R&D: Ripoff & Duplicate.
Lol! New acronym for my vocabulary, ty :)
You ain't trying if you ain't cheating.
Actually, this Hind was used for many years as an OPFOR (enemy) helicopter at the Army JRTC in Ft. Polk, Louisiana. I was "attacked" by it while training there in 1993 - it is a very big, very loud impressive helicopter! The infantry were just told to hide from and don't bother trying to fire on it with anything less than a .50 cal.
I went thru JRTC at Ft Chaffee around MAR 88. I guess it moved.
There's also an ex-Iraqi Hind captured during Desert Storm that the Army used (and might still be using?) for OPFOR for a long time.
EDIT: ruclips.net/video/Qlric6pDNhw/видео.html
I remember when a HIND almost wiped out the Wolverines.
In the opening days of world war 3, a small group of partisans, kids mostley...
Oh I love how he referred to Area 51 as hangar 51.
Mark Hoadley HillBilly Hobo The hanger in Indiana Jones where they hide all of their secrets.
OK boomer
As a passionate man about history of war, I acclaim Mark's work.
As a french man, I acclaim his way of speaking, a pure pleasure to improve my oral comprehension with Mark's voice ^^
2 years later the eastern bloc collapsed, Germany reunified and all the Hinds of the former east german army became available to the west.
And then in Desert Storm, we took more. When I was station later at Ft.Irwin, we (OPFOR) had one. It's a hellish site to see one bank and bear down on you. Awesome heli.
Not nearly as much fun as sneaking in and stealing one though.
In Hind sight, the soviets shouldn't have been Russian to sell their gear so easily
They had no hindsight on this deal with the Libyans
As a US Tanker serving in the early 90's, we feared and respected the power and capability of the Hind.
Nobody:
People that play GTA: THATS A SAVAGE!!!!
And a Cargobob too.
It's being flown around a us airbase in the southwest, just keep looking to the sky. It has a distinct sound compared with US helicopters.
I, oddly, just read about this three days ago. Thank you for the awesome content!
I've seen, at least one, operating around Huntsville, Alabama on several occasions.
On warthunder subreddit?
I love hearing about these more obscure little events of recent history. Especially all these many covert operations and intelligence ops between the russians and americans.
Hands down the best history channel on RUclips
Semantics: If the helicopter was a legitimate spoils-of-war taken by the French and Chad forces, who then gave and sold (respectively) it to the US, then the US did not, as a matter of fact, steal it at all.
It is rumored that Homer Simpson's famous "Doh!" originated with Gorbachev when he learned of this incident.
Sammy Spaniel if you look closely at his birthmark it was actually a tattoo of a Hind
I just knew the Nightstalkers would be involved when he started talking about how hard it was going to be to fly out! Those guys rock.
Back in 2000 I was in a British infantry company and was flown over to Georgia to take part in a multi-arm-nation exercise (Asciet 2000). I was astonished that a civi contractor loaned a Hip and a Hind as well as several soviet tracked and wheeled vehicles to use as Opfor. Worth the air miles to see!
Does anyone remember when the media used to call it "the flying tank?"
Also, the fake Hind used in the "Rambo" movies. Ahh, the good old days. 😛
"The 1980s were the height of the Cold War."
Except for when the American and Soviet navies almost fought each other in 1962.
Thank you for making and posting, what a tremendous video! Absolutely no ridiculous dramatic music or sound effects or annoying wanky visual cuts so often seen on other videos of this nature. That's why I enjoyed it; simple and informative, easy to understand narration, with great pictures and no repetitive information making it drag out to 30 minutes. Well done. By the way, Good On Ya USA.
Libya:Leaves highly advanced helicopter
Us:Its free reelestate
Us it was us it was the Federal USA. We or us did nothing.
Catioi Cat 😂😂
Pentu Plove YOUR A RUSSIAN YOU WOULD TRY TO SAY THAT ..YOUR ENGLISH .RUSSIAN APP SUCKS BORSHT
Clever, and original
I remember seeing the picture from the thumbnail on reddit a few days ago and hoping for a quality video on the topic. Thank you for the video Mr. Felton!
USSR: *builds a higly-advanced helicopter, capable of both attack roles and cargo transport
USA: *yoink
Fun fact Thomas Edison spent more time and money sueing inventors to steal their designs and ideas rather than actually doing work. Pretty much sums up America’s contributions in the world.
Libyan General: I think we're missing a helicopter, don't tell you know who.
Interesting video but I thought that the official world speed record for a helicopter is 249 mph achieved by a Westland Lynx
The 80s were a great time to be in US Army Aviation. I was stationed at Ft Campbell, home of TF160, flying CH47s during period this raid took place.
The Hind in the story may be one of the ones that ended up at the Test Activity at Ft Rucker, AL.
Always something new and interesting on Mark's channel. Thanks again for the content and the high quality production. The visual content is always so relevant be it WW2 B&W stills or colour film from later incidents, as here. - what an enormous amount of research you must do.
Never realise how lagre the hind actually is untill in saw it beneath that chinook
CIA: how much money should we offer them
CHAD: Yes
So the mission to steal it was in fact a recovery mission from an airfield under friendly control.
This channel is so underrated and interesting. Don’t ever stop man.
Wouldn't "Worlds fastest military helicopter" go to the Westland Lynx helicopter? It set a new world helicopter speed record of 249.1 mph (400.87 kph) over 20 years ago
A friend of mine was the roadmaster on this raid. He spoke of it many years ago while he was showing me pics of training missions. This wasn't the craziest thing he was in on. Just one of many.
I love it when a plan comes together!
To clear up some misconceptions...This was declassified years ago. The maker of the video didn`t expose any secrets. The aircraft sat for months in Chad in the exact spot where it took a round in one engine, rendering it unflyable. It wasn`t able to take off under the power of the remaining good engine and was abandoned by the pilots. It wasn`t stored anywhere, again it remained where it was damaged. The reason for recovering it wasn`t to study the technology (Russian technology in the 1980s wasn`t very advanced), but find out what it`s capabilities were. The photo at the 5:50 mark is not the "lifting test". The actual test was done with an old Sikorsky helicopter airframe weighted down to approximate the correct weight. The Chinook in that photo isn`t even a 160 SOAR aircraft. In 1990, the Hind was flown in broad daylight to several military installations (although its origin remained secret at that time).....no government "secret" storage facility.
I’ll bet when Gaddafi found out his hair straitened out.
I was a Cold War soldier during the 70's/80's and this chopper was something to fear. It's still a beast.
Roger Hinman can you explain why ? I’m genuinely curious
Too big and underpowered; the need to make it a troop carrier in addition to a gunship required it be much bigger than was necessary to carry out either task, which made it a huge target and sapped it's maneuverability. The Hind was particularly so hampered by the "hot and high" conditions in Afghanistan that it literally couldn't hover or it'd fall out of the sky; it could only take-off with a running start and do straight-line weapon runs like a jet, except being much larger and much slower. This eliminated the primary advantage of a chopper, which is unpredictability and concealment. Lastly the thing had not been designed with any kind of regard for IR signature (nor any defensive flares) so a single Mujahadeen with a Stinger missile could (and did) kill them at any time they were in range. All they had to do was hit one engine and the thing would drop like a stone.
Why Mi-24 and not T-72 tank hordes with heavies like T-64 and T-80? Or Mechanised infantry with BMP-2s supported by tracked artillery like Akatsya. Or motorized infantry with BTR-70s and tons of towed and wheeled mortar platforms? Or VDV landing in the unprotected belly of the enemy.. Soviets were very capable enemies, USA were unmatched in air and sea, russians rulled everything on the ground.
This helicopter was at Biggs Army Airfield in the early/mid 1990's. It was amazing to see it fly over us during many of our FTX's. Very different sound. Very low pitch thump.
Americans and Russians both screwed up. They shoulda anaylized that diving attack 🐦 bird at 9:18.
U.S crew as they tie it up and prepare to take off: "yoink"
This pissed off the Soviets so much, that it's been nearly 30 years since they shared their tech with nations aligning with theirs.
State of the art teck no way. Other stuff yes.
"A Hind D? Colonel, what's a Russian gunship doing here?"
"hangar 51" ;)
CLAP DEM CHEEKZ
Kadaffi's worst mistake was picking a fight with Chad.
Mark Felton Productions (IMO) One of your best video's.....well done!
09:19 Did anyone else pick up the bird knocked out of the sky by the C-5? You actually hear it hit the ground in the clip.
Was looking for your comment. Thanks!
I wondered what that was. Thanks.
Nah, he was diving on a tossed bag of french fries on the ground. Slightly miscalculated his attack trajectory. Poor guy! :)
Ditto
Yes. Is the C-5 exhaust really that bad?
They could’ve just called Pegasus 🤦♂️
On a side note, I like the birds in the background that keep falling from the sky, the one that got washed away by the chinook blades, and near the end when the C-5 was flying over, you see the bird drop.
These stories of operations that go off essentially completely without a hitch are extremely interesting. The "smoothness" and ease that comes with these stories is pretty cool. Other harrowing stories are interesting as well but it's always interesting to hear of operations that went off completely without a problem *or* any problems were solved expertly and no loss of life or limb occurred. I think generally I have the sense that something is going to go wrong, which is probably from previous stories and movies, so when things go completely right it feels novel
Fantastic no BS account. This creator did a very nice job conveying the information. We need more creators like this on this platform. I look forward to viewing more content here.
All the best to you and yours!
One of my favourite helicopters... Was lucky enough to be in Budapest this year for their national day celebrations (20th August) where they threw one of these all over the place over the Danube in the middle of the city.
Steve Evans threw one of flew one ;)
I made this heist yesterday on GTA
actually the game is GAT not GTA its Grand Automobile Theif (I'm joking haha)
THE BIG ONEEEEE
#IdiotsEdit how many edits so far?
I was an AF reserve Intel officer when this occurred. I remember reading in message traffic that anyone needing information or had questions about the Hind to contact a certain number/agency; that one had been "acquired" from the Libyans in Chad and that it would be evaluated and information on it would be forthcoming.
I was a Marine Corps CH-53D pilot in ‘88. We never even heard a faint rumor of this. Zero mention in any classified message traffic. Very well kept secret.
Great video Mark. Informative and interesting as always.
Warthunder, when is America gonna get their premium hind?
No shit if Japan can have B17s in the tech tree why no Hind in American tech tree
I love the old school fan to cool the pilot. LOL
As an old man I miss the stability of the US/Soviet Union balance. Yes may sound crazy but M.A.D worked.
The fan was to keep the sweat out of the pilot's eyes because Soviet choppers had no air conditioning. The sweat would also give him something to remember fondly during the winter months, as Soviet choppers also had no cockpit heater.
Gorilla Jones it sounds like you aren’t old enough to remember the missile crisis in Cuba and the feeling that we all really were about to be extinct as a species. I don’t miss it one bit.
it still works, even when it comes to Iran or North Korea that may or may not have a capability to deliver the payload to the US
Stability like the Cuban missile crisis?
Your programs are always so well done. I wish RUclips would let it be found under documentary when you want the best historical program available.
Fantastic telling of this incredible event! I was enthralled the entire time. Thank you.
Thank you sir for this video I would rate this at top-notch quality
“Hit the bell icon” Mark, you do realize we all did just that ages ago do you not?
It was examined by "Top Men." "TOP MEN."
World speed record for a helicopter? Are we forgetting the Westland Lynx?
hangar 51. ha! that brought a chuckle. thanks. i was a c-5a loadmaster out of dover afb back in the 70s and loaded a chinook onto a c-5 at yokota, as well as an army fixed wing. fixed wing delivered to dothan/ft. rucker museum. chinook to philadelphia for upgrade. flew 100+ round trips to germany and beyond. then joined army in 80's and at rucker, thru the decades, transitioned to uh-1, uh-60, and lastly the ch-47. when stationed in cyprus, raf akrotiri the c-5 brought our tdy group and our blackhawks from our kaserne in germany. years later would see the occasional c-5 landings at balad air base, iraq while doing ch-47 maintenance test flights in the pattern. always nice to see and hear the big bird.
Excellent work, Mark Felton. You're very knowledgeable and we always learn a lot from your videos. Thank you.
Hey Mark, Chinook is pronounced shi-NOOK, and it means (originally) a warm Pacific wind, especially in the winter. A "chinook day" is a welcome treat where it occurs, like in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Thanks!
Damn,once again something we never knew and Mark saved it for Us !!!🤯🤩
There's a Hind Helicopter at the Russell Tank Museum in Illinois.
Mark Felton. I saw you on the military channel. You are a military historian. That helps to explain your excellent RUclips videos. Thank you.
Cargobob carries away Savage, very nice.