PALM BEACH. 1980s killing machine Airwolf, once the master of global airspace in the capable hands of Stringfellow Hawk and ageing sidekick Dominic Santini, has been discovered in Palm Beach, Florida, performing at birthday parties for the children of the rich and famous.
The helicopter gunship is widely credited with bringing down the Soviet Union, saving dozens of prisoners-of-war from Vietnamese internment camps, and repeatedly destroying the entire Libyan air force.
However Airwolf disappeared suddenly in the early 1990s, with some experts speculating that co-pilot Santini, who was already displaying early onset dementia in 1989, had accidentally flown the chopper into the side wall of the extinct New Mexico crater in which it was housed.
But this week the Cold Warrior was rediscovered by salesman Doug Simms and his wife Barb, as they were returning from a day of miniature golf.
“We were going past this huge mansion, and next thing the chopper kind of hovered up into view over the wall,” said Doug.
“At first I yelled, ‘Shit, Barb! Airwolf! Get down!’ I was pretty sure it was going to strafe us, because that’s what Airwolf does, you know?”
Simms said that a moment later the gunship’s belly-mounted rocket pods extended. However he said that instead of spitting flaming shrapnel-studded death, the pods dribbled out “four or five pink balloons”.
It was then, Simms said, that he realised that the chopper was providing the entertainment for an expensive children’s birthday party.
“It was real depressing,” said Simms. “Airwolf looked kind of sad. He wasn’t roaring or doing that screaming thing he used to do when he was flying low. He just dropped some balloons on the kids, and then landed, and some kid smashed an ice-cream cone on his window, and another kid took a pee on where his machine-guns used to pop out.”
Subsequent enquires by local media have established that the chopper was bought by Magical Laughing Fairy Entertainment in 1998, and since then has been used as a party piece in Florida.
Current pilot Nigel Smith, of Devonshire in the UK, says he never met Stringfellow Hawk, but did find alcohol- and urine stains on the pilot seat when he took over. He also confirmed that his experience of strafing Soviet airfields and dogfighting with Libyan MiGs was “limited”.
“Yeah, I haven’t done much of that,” he told the Tampa Herald. “No call for it at kiddies’ parties, you see. In fact, no, I’ve never done it.”
Asked if he had ever emulated Stringfellow Hawk and flown from New Mexico to northern Siberia and then to Vietnam and back on a single tank of fuel, he said, “No.”
