Night Flight over NYC

A NY Times article about laser mapping of New York City has wonderful images of the city at night taken from 3500 feet. You can see the photos here

They reminded me of my most memorable flight over the city. While serving as an adviser to the 77th Army Reserve Command from 1975 to 1978, I was frequently privileged to fly in Huey helicopters piloted by reservists who would pick up two or three of us at Fort Totten and take us up the Hudson and over West Point, sending herds of deer running as we crossed over Storm King mountain to land at Stewart airfield. Or sometimes we flew across Manhattan, turned south over the George Washington bridge, and followed the Hudson past Manhattan to New York harbor, over the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island to Fort Wainwright, near the Verrazano Narrows bridge.

But my favorite flight was on a clear, cold October night returning from a TDY to Fort Dix, NJ. Four of us arrived at the Dix helipad to meet a Huey from Stewart Field, and were surprised to find there was no copilot. Because I was a captain he asked me to sit in the copilot seat, and we took off for Fort Totten in the autumn sunset. By the time we crossed over the Verrazano Narrows bridge to New York harbor it was after eight o'clock at night, and we followed the East River north below 2000 feet, lower than the aircraft in the Times photos. The skyscrapers of Manhattan were on our left and Brooklyn on our right, and I could see the Manhattan and the Brooklyn bridges and the Queensborough and Williamsburg bridges through the chin bubble under my feet as we passed over them. We turned eastward near the Triboro bridge and flew over Laguardia airport and the Whitestone and Throgs Neck bridges before arriving home at Fort Totten's breezy helipad by the East River.