Whirlybirds Telvision Show (1957-1960) Incident at Del Rio.

[Steve]

I have always loved helicopters. My first delighted impressions as a child to the look, abilities and the sounds of them in my early life started because of a TV show called 'Whirlybirds'. Along with TV shows as a kid I loved like 'Sky King' and 'Sea Hunt'. 'Whirlybirds' which aired some from 1957 to 1960 with some 111 episodes. It was a very popular show at the time - if it only ran 3 years and later in syndication. The programs (each about 25 minutes long - far fewer commercials then). The show was produced by Desilu (Lucy). It showcased the adventures of Chuck Martin (Kenneth Toby - 'The Thing from another World' -1951) and P.T. Moore (played by actor Craig Hill who just passed away in Spain April 21, 2014).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whirlybirds


Many of the best shows where produced by later famous director producer Robert Altman (MASH-1970) highlighting some amazing stunt flying and chases. TV producers could not afford to do (or Hollywood Insurance companies be willing to insure) many of the live stunts demonstrated in this program today. One example: Episode #29 I cherish in my video collection is: 'Cycle Of Terror' (aired 8/19/1957) has some of the best stunt flying I have ever seen before or since (including the much later 'Air Wolf' and 'Blue Thunder'), flying through some very tight ravines with little rotor blade clearance after a rouge motor cycle gang member..shot at the famous Iverson Ranch, a dude ranch used to film westerns. The helicopter finishes the chase knocking the rider off his moving bike with the helicopter landing skids.

But one interesting if lesser good examples of this TV series was an interesting episode called 'Incident at Del Rio'. Watching these programs on You tube, to my surprise this rough copy has surfaced on You Tube recently of all things. Flying saucer stories were big news then, and captivated the public (they do now more - but perhaps in a different way). All this was before the abduction accounts, conspiracy proclamations, and all the rest to muddy the waters had surfaced.

Synopsis: 'Chuck' & 'P.T.' travel south of the border into Mexico to visit an old rancher friend and his daughter. The hands and servants at the large ranch are being frightened by 'El Diablo'. UFO's being used here to frighten away so gun runners can work illegally undisturbed. The pilots investigate.

Often, it has been thought 'UFO' cover stories have been used to conceal classified important projects such as 'Area 51'. UFO enthusiasts in the public eagerly in their enthusiasm propagating the accounts to the government's delight with those cover stories.

By contrast today, if you posed a hoax of UFO's as a cover story like depicted in the TV show.....it would more likely today attract crowds than frighten away these days. But it is a nostalgic piece of television and shows the attitudes about 'Flying Saucers' then.

Hope you enjoy.

Steve

[skywalker]

That was interesting. It seems that back then people took flying saucer stories a lot more seriously than they do nowadays. That might account for why the people in the show were so afraid of them. Back then the knowledge of outer space wasn't nearly as advanced as it is now so people probably did think there were aliens just waiting to come down from Mars and invade. At least that's what they saw happening at the movies back in those times. The characters fear might also have been because of the location near the border of Mexico where people have a tendency to be much more superstitious than they are further north...hence the nickname of "el diablo" to describe the UFO.

I wonder why they chose Del Rio as the location for the flying saucer story? Could it have had any connection to the UFO that supposedly crashed down there in 1955? Was that incident (if it even happened) reported at all in the newspapers back then? Or was it just a coincidence?

This show also reminded me of another show I saw called The Fall Guy which came on in the 1970s. I remember they also had an episode where a helicopter was disguised as a UFO to provide a distraction for a bank robbery. Not only were there lights and a fake flying saucer attached to the bottom of the chopper but they even went so far as to kidnap one of the local citizens and convince her that she had been abducted by aliens by drugging her. This show would have been just a few years after the Travis Walton abduction so I'm sure they probably used that as inspiration. That once again makes me wonder if the Whirlybirds show had heard anything at all about the Del Rio crash that supposedly took place just a few years earlier.

BTW, the noise that "El Diablo" made was annoying. It was kind of silly too. That was definitely something right out of the 1950s.