You’ve heard of snakes on a plane. Here’s a Hawk on a train.
An HH-60M helicopter crew from the Alaska Army National Guard pulled off an aerial balancing act during a special operations medical exercise late last month. With a tricky two-wheeled landing on a train’s flatbed car, the crew delivered supplies to a train and picked up a simulated patient.
The Guard crew’s skill on the touchdown impressed their active duty counterparts during Special Operation Forces Arctic Medic 2025, a major exercise held in Alaska in February that brought together Guard, conventional, and special ops teams from active duty, Coast Guard elements, and federal law enforcement, as well as civilian medical teams.
“The flight crew that landed on the train was not just good, they were amazing,” said Col. Manuel Menendez, command surgeon with the Army’s Special Operations Command North, an active duty command. “I’m looking forward to my next trip to Alaska, where I will work with them again soon.”
To pull it off, the crew had to execute what is known as a “pinnacle landing,” which crews use when a helicopter cannot get all of its wheels onto a landing site at once. In a normal landing, a crew would land the Black Hawk’s two main wheels and one tail wheel evenly on the platform. But there was no room for the tail wheel on the train.
As the helicopter’s two front wheels — clad in giant skis for deep snow landings in Alaska’s backcountry — settled onto the train, the pilots had to keep full power on the engines as if hovering, with the rear of the helicopter in the air.
The flight, the Alaska Guard said in a release, was part of an exercise to evaluate how patients who are chemically or biologically contaminated might be moved via a hospital train. Soldiers on the train unloaded supplies from the helicopter while it was perched on the platform and Staff Sgt. Steven Gildersleeve, a critical care flight paramedic, was hoisted onto the train to medically evaluate and evacuate a simulated patient.
The crew made the landing on the Alaska Railroad train on a stretch of track along the Chena River near Fairbanks. The flight crew included pilots Chief Warrant Officer 3 JD Miller and Chief Warrant Officer 2 David Berg, crew chief Sgt. 1st Class Brad Mckenzie and medics Gildersleeve and Staff Sgts Michael Crane. Berg was at the controls for the landing while Miller supervised.
“I think a big part of what we brought to the fight here was our depth of experience working in these cold weather conditions and our ability to work with and coordinate with a multitude of different units,” said Berg. “We really want to push that we’re open for business in working with all of our training partners to hone our skill sets and relationships.”
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