Landing a helicopter in ideal conditions is already a daunting task. You have to balance out several factors perfectly for an easy, gentle touchdown. A hard landing could do lots of damage…if the helicopter has skids, you could spread them out. If it has struts, you could blow them, and worst of all is a condition where the rotor blades droop down far enough that they smack parts of the main body. That’s not good. And that’s in the best of circumstances! Now, let’s picture something that’s the complete polar opposite of a perfect-day, light breeze landing: dropping a Westland Lynx helicopter onto a ship that looks to be in the middle of the North Atlantic during the rough season. If a flat, smooth surface is a bad enough target, the Knud Rasmussen‘s pitching, rolling flight deck has to be the seventh circle of Hell for a helicopter pilot. Not only is the helicopter moving on it’s own accord, but now the ship is, too. This puts the pilot and co-pilot into a strange dance with the ground crew and the ship: both have to be lined up and in time with one another, otherwise chances are very good that the sound of a very, very expensive “splash” will be heard…or worse. Flying isn’t for the faint-hearted, but this kind of work is on a completely different level that few attain…and I know plenty of bat-shit crazy pilots.