On a brisk 1979 winter day in Menominee, Michigan, David Brandt stepped out of the Enstrom Helicopter hangar and looked skyward. “I was horrified,” recalled Brandt, then Enstrom’s vice president of engineering. A few thousand feet directly above him, F. Lee Bailey, the flamboyant trial attorney, aviator, and owner of Enstrom Helicopter, was about to put the company’s sole example of its new, four-place Model 280L Hawk into a Vne dive. Money from Bailey’s high-profile law practice was keeping Enstrom afloat and the 280L was seen as the key to the company’s future success. If Bailey augered in, it was game over. Brandt had hired an experienced Navy test pilot to wring out the Hawk, but Bailey insisted on personally putting the aircraft through its paces as well. “He was our chief kamikaze pilot,” Brandt said. Bailey pushed the Hawk to its fastest speed yet and recovered the dive. “He was perfect,” Brandt said.
He was also cold. Brandt had neglected to outfit the prototype with a heater, so pilots had to fly it in snowsuits, and the doors were sealed with thick green tape to keep out the cold that felt like -20 deg F.
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