“Treasures From The Pioneer Era” – Continuation from Ernie Tanner’s book: “Where Angels Fear To Fly” My companion Georg waded through the water to the three houses to get help and I waited for him. It seemed a very long time until finally I heard the longed for three cheers […]
History
13 posts
On August 20, we celebrated over 50 years of success with the whole "Helimission family" together with many of our friends and supporters in the Bernese Oberland. In Appenzellerland, the anniversary celebration took place on September 24.
In 1975, following a long drought, southern Ethiopia was afflicted by severe floods. The river Wabi Shebele overflowed and spread out to a width of up to 10 miles (17 km). At that time, the communist regime sent students off to do forced labor in every part of the country. […]
Treasures from The Pioneer Era, reported by Ernie Tanner: All the richer now for my many experiences, I took off again for my second trip a few months later, in January 1973. This time I had a more powerful and faster machine, a Jet Ranger, HB-XCX. It might be expected […]
Treasures from The Pioneer Era, reported by Ernie Tanner: On one of my first flights from Africa back to Switzerland in the early 1970s: I flew merrily along the Italian coast towards Genoa. At La Spezia, I had to fly past the military airport giving it a wide berth of […]
Treasures from The Pioneer Era, reported by Ernie Tanner: On our more than six-thousand-kilometer return flight from Cameroon to Switzerland, we had to fly over the Hogger Mountains in Algeria as we had done on our outward flight. The red rocky towers of the Hoggar mountains rise up steeply into […]
Treasures From The Pioneer Era, reported by Ernie Tanner: In fine weather, with a full tank and renewed courage, we took off from Lausanne towards Geneva. Navigation wasn’t a problem this time, as I needed only to fly along the shore of Lake Geneva. We enjoyed the magnificent scenery below […]
Treasures from The Pioneer Era, reported by Ernie Tanner: On 17 January 1972, my companion Marcel and I set off in our small piston helicopter on our 1st ferry flight from Belp in Switzerland to Cameroon. My godfather came to see us off and said, “This may be the last […]
Helimission’s aim is to bring social, medical and humanitarian help to people in remote and inaccessible areas. Helimission is non-denominational and helps those since 1971 in need without consideration of their religious affiliation. SOS operations Helimission provides SOS relief in areas affected by catastrophes in cooperation with international and national […]
Back in the early 70s, we heard a lot of reports about helicopter operations in the war being waged in the jungles of Vietnam. I couldn’t stop thinking about those agile aircraft. A helicopter would have taken perhaps only two hours to cover the laborious and dangerous eight-day trek along the Gorilla Path through Cameroon’s jungle. “It must be possible to use one of these for aid operations in third world countries, too,” I reflected. But the idea would still have to overcome two major hurdles.
In 1977 the president of the Swiss Aeroclub asked me whether some of their planes might accompany me on the flight across the desert to Cameroon. They wanted to seize the opportunity to have a helicopter with them as an emergency measure on their high-risk enterprise. And so I had an escort of twenty-two planes. No, not really an escort of course, because they all flew much faster than I did and they went ahead of me. This was my fourth crossing. We had arranged to meet up again in Olbia, Sardinia.
In 1986 we bought a helicopter in Abu Dhabi in the United Emirates on the Gulf of Persia. Now I intended to fly the machine via Ethiopia to Kenya where it was urgently needed.
