When Helicopter Combat Support Special Squadron (HCS) 5 disestablished in December 2006, it ended nearly two decades of service in peace and war. Along with its sister squadron, HCS-4, its mission of combat search and rescue and support for special warfare operations were unique among helicopter squadrons in the Navy and descended from the rotary-wing light attack and combat support missions of the Vietnam War. Most recently the “Fire Hawks” were put to the test in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the squadron members receiving their mobilization call on 13 March 2003. Ten days later, men and machines were on the ground in Kuwait and when Coalition forces crossed into Iraq, HCS-5 was in the skies above them, flying 180 combat sorties in support of special operations missions. With the end of major combat operations, Iraq settled into a different brand of warfare in which special operations played an essential role. HCS-5 established a forward operating base in a battle-damaged hardened aircraft shelter (HAS) at an abandoned airfield, becoming the only Navy unit based in country. The squadron returned home in March 2004, after turning over their forward base to a detachment of HCS-4. Along the way they completed more than 900 combat sorties and 1,700 flight hours, more than 55 percent of which were at night, during its year-long deployment.
In the tradition of the homemade signs that appeared at wartime camps of old, the signature ones being those that listed distance to remembered places on the home front, the squadron kept a roughly hewn memento of their time in Iraq that in of its final official acts before disestablishment was donated to the museum. Topped by handcrafted silhouettes of a palm tree and Iraqi style rooftops and featuring the insignias of HCS-4 and HCS-5 around which are written the names of squadron members, the sign announcing to visitors their arrival at Naval Air Facility Baghdad was posted near the squadron’s spaces there and at Ali Al Salem, Kuwait during 2003 and 2004.
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