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assault chopper, named after Bram Stoker's bloodsucking count. |
Strikeforce for the New Romanian Order
by D. Trull
Enigma Editor
dtrull@parascope.com
In 1897, when an Irish civil servant named Bram Stoker published a strange novel about a bloodsucking Romanian count, he could never have imagined that a century later vampire enthusiasts and footgazing goths everywhere would be celebrating Dracula's 100th birthday. Commemorative editions and critical analyses of the novel are appearing in bookstores, and a major Dracula festival has been held in the British town of Whitby, where a vacationing Stoker is said to have dreamed up his immortal tale. But it's the land of Vlad Dracul's Transylvania stomping grounds that has offered its undead homeboy the most ass-kicking birthday gift that a vampire can't sink his teeth into.
Dracula will fly menacingly through the skies of Romania once again, although this time around he'll have armor-piercing missiles for fangs, and it'll take more than garlic cloves and sunlight to slow him down. This real-life horror comes courtesy the Romanian military, which has chosen to observe the dark centenary by naming its new combat helicopter the AH1 RO-Dracula.
Romania's bat-copter represents the latest pendulum swing in the nation's storied love-hate relationship with the famed vampire and his historical inspiration. Stoker based his character on the 15th century exploits of Prince Vlad Teres, a.k.a. Vlad the Impaler. The charming bon vivant Vlad is remembered for skewering delinquent taxpayers and encroaching Turks, whose piked corpses he planted like telephone poles along the roadways. Romanians cherished Vlad the Impaler for hundreds of years as a symbol of national pride. You've got to admit, he does sort of make Uncle Sam look like a wuss.
Romania has always been a touch more ambivalent about Dracula, whom Stoker created by mixing Vlad the Impaler's disposition with Romanian folk tales of vampires. Natives of Transylvania grew weary of the sinister connotations attached to their hometown, the same as people unlucky enough to reside in Auschwitz, Chernobyl or Brentwood. Derided with comparisons to the original Vlad and to Dracula, Romania's murderous Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu outlawed all such references and killed off the myth more effectively than a stake through the heart.
In the aftermath of Ceausescu's 1989 execution, the liberated citizens of Romania gleefully reclaimed their vampiric legacy and went completely Dracula-crazy. The once-forbidden literary figure has been resurrected as a national hero. There are yearly "Dracula congresses," which include masquerade balls and mock witch trials. And now swooping down to safeguard Transylvanian airspace is the Dracula assault chopper, which was named with the express intention of frightening Romania's enemies.
Aside from the cool and scary name, the other notable thing about the AH1 RO-Dracula is that its production is being funded by American investment. Bell Helicopter Textron, a U.S. manufacturer, entered into a contract with Romania's IAR Brasov for an initial order of 96 helicopters. Poetically, the joint venture is being carried out at a factory in Cluj, the very town where Vlad the Impaler once lived and shish-kabobbed. Romania is vying for inclusion in an anticipated expansion of NATO, and U.S. involvement in the Dracula copter could be seen as a first step toward that goal.
Or it could also mean there's a chance, however remote, that the U.S. military might get some AH1 RO-Draculas of its very own. Maybe Romania has a point: plain old war machines of mass destruction just aren't frightening enough already. Let's face it, those drab unmarked black helicopters are so "been there, terrorized that."
Just for an extra dash of patriotism, the Pentagon could substitute Dracula for some homegrown icons of horror and mayhem. Imagine how American hearts would swell with civic pride for the Freddy Krueger cruise missile, or the Darth Vader stealth bomber, or the Kathie Lee Gifford nuclear warhead. And if we decide to stick to creepy bite-fetishist monsters, we can always name a couple of choppers after Marv Albert and Mike Tyson.
Sources: The Times (London); Romanian Monitorul
(c) Copyright 1997 ParaScope, Inc.
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