The White House Helicopter Escapade

Washington’s skies hosted action movie scenes

Background picture from Wikimedia. Helicopter picture by Airwolfhound from Wikimedia.

In 1974, the USA’s political nerve centre, Washington D.C., was awash with intrigue, with Richard Nixon’s administration still in the throes of the Watergate Scandal. A unique event would draw attention away from those concerns, if only for a moment, when a young man’s actions illustrated the potential threats a determined pilot could pose.

Finding Wings

One evening, Private Robert Kenneth Preston returned to his base, fresh from a visit to a nearby dance hall and restaurant, but his spirits were still down. It was fresh after midnight on February 17, 1974, and he still felt glum about failing his helicopter pilot training course, quashing his dream of becoming a military evac pilot (Carlson 2014). He wanted relief from his despondence, so he drove to Fort Meade’s Tipton Field, and took to the skies in one of the unguarded Bell UH-1B Huey helicopters.

A chart of Robert K. Preston’s initial flight from Fort Meade to Washington. By the Federal Aviation Administration from Wikimedia.

At 12:25 am, a resident of a Jessup trailer park contacted police to report a helicopter flying low, landing and then taking off again (Madden 1974). Later, police would notice Preston’s helicopter flying…