Amazing Team Work with a Chinook

According to Snopes, this is not only a factual (rather than fictional shot) but this photo was taken sometime in 2003--or so we think.

It was reposted it to The Bar by dave gerecke, who described it (well, sure seems verbatim to what showed up on Snopes, so I'll paraphrase for some variety in life).

Photographid by a soldier in Afghanistan of a helo mission to extract prisoners (note at least two civvies visible). The amazing pilot is Larry Murphy, Pennsylvania Army National Guard, and employee of Keystone Helicopter Corp, flying EMS choppers in civilian life.

With this kind of a command of his bird (not to mention the powers of persuasion to get the rest of the team--on the bird and on the ground--to cooperate with this plan), we can see why Murphy was called back to active duty.

One Barfly noted, Murphy has to be in the top 10% of the top 10% to pull this off. Look long and hard at that photo, really letting it sink in what's going on and you'll begin to realize the scope of this feat. The bird is a CH-47 Chinook and as Mike Fagan pointed out:

Think for a moment just how difficult that pilot's life is. The tail rotor is partially in ground effect. The front rotor is in flight.

That thing is about one bobble from flipping over. Especially since roofs in that part of the world are *not* built to take the weight of a Chinook.