The White House Helicopter Incident - www.NBCUniversalArchives.com

A little past midnight on Feb. 17, 1974, Pfc. Robert K. Preston stole an unarmed UH-1 Iroquois, better known as the “Huey,” from Tipton airfield in Fort Meade, Maryland. Twenty-year-old Preston, who had a private fixed-wing pilot’s license, had washed out of the Army’s helicopter pilot school the previous year.

After buzzing drivers on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, he reached the White House and briefly touched down, with the Secret Service initially not firing on him. After he took off from the lawn, the arrival of two Maryland State police choppers led to an aerial chase.
He was “one hell of a pilot,” a Maryland state police later said. Preston briefly hovered near the Washington Monument, at one point nearly colliding with it while under fire from the state police. He then returned to the White House and hovered 100 meters away on the South Lawn, coming under a fusillade of shotgun and submachine gun fire.

Slightly wounded by buckshot, he set the Huey down and after a short foot chase, was tackled by the Secret Service. President Richard Nixon, who was deeply embroiled in the Watergate scandal, was not in the White House at the time.

At his court martial, Preston admitted stealing the chopper, saying that the Army had unjustly extended his term of enlistment after he had failed flight school.

Despite an escapade that would have any sergeant major suffering a rage-induced stroke, Preston got off relatively light. After serving six months in a military stockade, he was released with a general discharge for unsuitability.
http://taskandpurpose.com/army-private-stolen-huey-shot-white-house-lawn-1974/