UH-60 Black Hawk

General information

Type

Utility helicopter

Affiliation

Earth Defense Force
United States Army (formerly)

Usage

Manufacturer

Sikorsky Aircraft

Used by

Earth Defense Force pilots
Hellfire
Miller
Miller's co-pilot
Wilson

Capacity	Crew	Passengers
8	2 (pilot & co-pilot)	6‎

Game information

Entity name

UH_60_BlackHawk

The UH-60 Black Hawk is a utility military helicopter that is used by the Earth Defense Force. It saw heavy use during the Mental War. It is featured prominently in the Serious Sam 3: BFE campaign.

It is absent from Serious Sam 4, where it is instead replaced with the MH-6 Little Bird and V-22 Osprey.

Overview[]

Black Hawk missile systems — The Black Hawk was equipped with a missile approach warning system to detect incoming threats.

Like the AH-64 Apache, the Black Hawk was originally used by the United States Army, but when Mental's forces began invading Earth, the EDF started using the helicopter as their main utliltiy helicopter, along with the MH-6 Little Bird and V-22 Osprey.^[1]^[2]

The Black Hawk is designed to transport people from one location to another with ease. It has several seats which serves its purpose as a transport helicopter. Unlike the AH-64 Apache, the Black Hawk has no weapon systems equipped, which makes it an extremely vulnerable target for Mental's forces. The helicopter is also lightly armored; all it took was a single missile to take one down.^[3]^[4]

Appearances[]

Serious Sam 3: BFE[]

Sandwhale and Black Hawk — Alpha Team's Black Hawk narrowly avoids being swallowed whole by a Sandwhale.

The first Black Hawk seen is being piloted by Miller, along with his co-pilot, who are deploying Team Alpha into war-torn Cairo to recon with Bravo Team and rescue Professor Stein from the Egyptian Museum. Shortly upon arrival into the city, they are immediately faced with a barrage of missiles that are aimed at the helicopter. Miller and his co-pilot perform evasive maneuvers, but this turns out ineffective and a missile manages to hit the helicopters tail.^[3] The resulting damage forces the crew to crash-land just outside the entrance to the museum, while the survivors are either killed in the crash or by Mental's Horde.^[3]

Another Black Hawk, piloted by Hellfire, appears at the end of the level, The Silent Riddler, to extract Sam from the Great Pyramid. Out of all the other Black Hawks that appear in-game, this was the only one that was not shot down.

The last Black Hawk seen is piloted by Wilson. It is used to pick up Sam from Luxor and take him back to EDF headquarters. During the flight back to base, his helicopter is shot down near the lost temples of Nubia by a Major Bio-mechanoid before Wilson can take action. The helicopter's wreckage is later discovered by Sam upon reaching an oasis in the desert. Seeing as there is nothing else that Sam can do, he leaves the wreck behind and makes his way back to what remains of civilization.

It is unknown if the EDF had any Black Hawks left following the destruction of Wilson's chopper and the attack that later follows on their base shortly after Sam makes it back to civilization.

Jewel of the Nile[]

A Black Hawk, piloted by Wilson, makes its way to the island of Philae, as the Time-Lock didn't come online as HQ had expected. Once Sam is done on the island, he contacts Quinn for extraction, but she regrets to inform him that all of their helicopters are busy at the moment. Instead, she instructs Sam to use of boat to get to Abu Simbel.^[5]

Upon finding the missing statue of Nefertari and opening the secret door in the temples, Sam contacts Quinn again with the hopes that HQ can extract him. Quinn regrets to inform him that Abu Simbel is, as she puts it, "the hottest zone in Egypt", so they can't risk sending another helicopter out.^[6] Therefore, they are unable to extract him, so he is forced to get to the dam on foot.

Wilson's Black Hawk doesn't arrive until much later to extract Sam after he kills Raahloom. This marks the last appearance of the helicopter in the DLC.

Behind the scenes[]

The Black Hawk was supposed to appear in T.E.O.R, as shown in a screenshot. It was scrapped before the game was due to be released.

Trivia[]

In real life, Black Hawks are equipped with countermeasures to counter heat-seeking or surface-to-air missiles, but in-game, none of the pilots used countermeasures, and could only avoid the missiles by performing evasive maneuvers.
Out of the three Black Hawks to appear in the game, two of them are shot down.
Miller is the only pilot seen piloting the helicopter with a co-pilot.
Wilson is the only pilot that picked up Sam twice (three times if counting the events that take place in the Jewel of the Nile DLC).
Like other vehicles used by the EDF, the Black Hawk has the EDF's logo on its body.
Like Garret's Apache, Hellfire's Black Hawk that appears in the Serious Sam Fusion version of Serious Sam 3 in The Silent Riddler is treated as a character entity in-game. It shares the same behavior as the Technopolyp, but does not attack the player and cannot be destroyed with the player's weapons.
- Because of this, if the player is playing on Mental difficulty, Hellfire's Black Hawk will periodically turn invisible and then visible.
- Oddly, the Black Hawk will bleed when it takes damage, despite not being a living thing.
The Black Hawk does not appear in Serious Sam 4. Instead, its role is replaced by the MH-6 Little Bird and V-22 Osprey.