US Marine Corps helicopters begin their descent into Dahlgren for last Friday's USMC flight operation.

It was one of nine other aircraft, six CH-53s Sea Stallions and three V-22 Ospreys, that parked at the Dahlgren airstrip after delivering members of Congress and their staffs to Quantico as part of that base’s ‘‘Marine Day.”

Afterwards, some 200 Dahlgren employees who watched the air armada sail in last Friday, were invited out to the runway to tour the military machinery.

‘‘That’s quite a Sea Stallion,” one of them remarked to Bently as he approached the helicopter.

‘‘We call it a Super Stallion,” the Marine pilot corrected. ‘‘These newer 53E’s are rated to lift up to 36,000 pounds. I was routinely making lifts of more than 9,000 pounds in Iraq.”

He also said that the Sikorsky-made aircraft can take 30 fully-equipped and combat ready Marines into battle with twin .50-caliber machine (M2) guns on each side of the fuselage and one mounted on the rear door.

According to its manufacturer, the CH-53 features twin T64 General Electric engines, with more than 3,690 shaft horse power. The Super Stallion has a cruise speed of 173 mph and a range of more than 620 miles.

The helicopter is fitted with a forward extendable in-flight refuel probe and it is typically used by the Navy and Marine Corps to also refuel from a ship at sea in hover moving mode by using a hoist hose refuel device.

Bently, a 1991 graduate of The Citadel, had his college ‘‘bulldog” mascot painted on the door of his aircraft fuselage. His older brother also attended the military college of South Carolina, he explained, noting, ‘‘so I was pleased to follow suit.”

Bently was in command of the Marine Heavy Helicopter Squadron 484, known as the ‘‘Condors” and is based at Marine Corps Air Station New river, N.C., and his group was part of five other USMC squadrons that visited Dahlgren.

The star of the event was the V-22 Osprey that represented Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 263’s ‘‘Thunder Chickens.”

Ospreys were developed by the Bell Helicopter Textron Corp. and have both level fixed wing and hover helicopter flight characteristics for short take off and landing capability.

According to the aircraft’s builder, once airborne the aircraft’s engines (Nacelles) rotate 90-degrees forward in as little as 12 seconds for horizontal flight, converting it into a more fuel efficient and higher speed turboprop airplane. It can reach speeds of 316 mph and has a range of 1,000 miles, can climb at a rate of more than 2,000 feet per minute to a ceiling of 26,000 feet. Like its Super Stallion air cousin, it is armed with machine gun capability in combat.

‘‘It can take 24 battle-ready Marines any where in a fast time,” said Marine Sgt. J.A. Lewis, one of the V-22 crewmen. ‘‘It’s a thrill to fly in one.”

The V-22 had a rough history in getting built for the Marine Corps with several headline-making catastrophic crashes that caused the Defense Department to actually ground the entire program at one time. But the mechanical glitches that caused the initial miscues were ironed out through careful reengineering design and the Osprey was declared fully airworthy by the Defense Department about three years ago.

The V-22 had a flyaway cost of about $70 million per aircraft last year, but the Navy believes it can shave more than $10 million off of that price after the five-year production contract began this year. A total of 458 V-22s are expected to be built for the Marine Corps, Navy and the U.S. Air Force when the program ends.

The fleet of Stallions and Ospreys may return to Dahlgren at some future date, according to the pilots, and offer another opportunity for base employees to view the helicopters and tiltrotor aircraft.