Dean Carico

United States of America

 

1944 - 2017

Gerald “Dean” Carico was a driving force in Navy and Army rotary-wing flight testing, and especially dynamic interface simulation, for more than 40 years. At the time of his retirement, he was the senior aerospace engineer at Rotary Wing Ship Suitability Branch of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) at Patuxent River, Maryland.

Carico was born on Oct. 26, 1944. He earned a BS in aerospace engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1967, an MS in aerospace engineering from Princeton in 1976, and an MS in engineering science from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1988. He was also an engineering graduate of the US Navy Test Pilot School.

His major contributions were in the areas of rotorcraft flight simulation, air vehicle model enhancements, rotorcraft/ship modeling enhancements, improved flight test databases, and related documentation.

Carico was a Lifetime member of AHS. He was an active member and former chair of the AHS Modeling & Simulation Technical Committee and was the author or co-author of more than a dozen technical papers. He received the US government’s Meritorious Civilian Service Award for testing in a combat zone in 1973, and the Richard L. Wernecke Award for technical excellence in rotorcraft test and evaluation in 1997. He received the Society of Flight Test Engineers (SFTE) Directors Award in September 2003 and was selected as a Fellow of SFTE in 2009.

Gerald “Dean” Carico, a US Navy aerospace engineer, passed away on November 18, 2017, he was 73.

AHS Updates: Vertiflite January/February 2018