Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (14 page)

“Well,” my copilot replied, “I was cleaning up our aircraft when they were getting ready to film. The smell made me sick again, so just as they started to roll the film I had to throw up. I was leaning up against the side of the aircraft, puking, and they just moved the camera over to the next aircraft on down the line.”

After two more uneventful days of patrolling without “West-by-God-Virginians” in the bar at night, we flew back to Frankfort, turned in the helicopter, and changed back into college students again.

Sleep well, America. The Guard is awake tonight.

14

NATIONAL GUARD NIGHT FLIGHT

CINCINNATI, OHIO ■ DECEMBER 1973

Just because you are a weekend warrior, you are not released from the obligations of all Army Aviators when it comes to instrument flight check rides and annual minimum flight times. But sometimes, as a weekend warrior, you get to reflect on things in ways you may not have expected.

S
o much instrument time and so much night time as well, not to mention the total flight time you are supposed to get, have a way of sneaking up on you when the end of the year rolls around. It’s not that you don’t want to fly, you love to fly, but you’ve got a family, a job, you’re a student, and it just sneaks up on you. One day, near the end of the year, the technician from Operations at the Aviation Facility calls and tells you, “Son, you are two hours short on your night time.”

It is December 27. The weather, while not cold enough for icing here on the surface of the airfield, is too cold to take a helicopter up into the clouds where there will certainly be ice. even if there wasn’t ice, you couldn’t take the helicopter up there because Frankfort only has non-precision approaches and the clouds are too low for that kind of instrument approach. But in any case, Huey’s can’t take ice, so here in a hover at the Boone National Guard Center at Frankfort Airport with the temperature just above freezing, at least you can technically “fly,” since a hover means that the aircraft is not in contact with the ground and is “flying.”

But you do feel like an idiot. Why didn’t you pay more attention to how much nighttime you’d accumulated over the past year so that you could at least get higher than these 3 feet? It is too late now, so here you are, hovering a helicopter around Frankfort’s airport, rain leaking through a poor windshield seal onto your left leg on the 27th of December. At least this Huey has a working bleed air heater so you are not cold as well as wet, like you would have been back when you were flying OH-13es.

Other National Guard night flights come back to you, like the time the year before when four aircrews decided to take their Hueys and do some nighttime formation flying. We would all takeoff in formation and fly a loose cruise up to Cincinnati’s general aviation airport, Lunken Airport, refuel, get a cup of coffee at the snack bar, check weather, and fly back. It would be a loose cruise, what some jokingly called a “nuclear formation” because the aircraft were so far apart that an atomic weapon wouldn’t get you all. We had been excellent formation pilots once, or at least thought we were back in Vietnam, but that was a long time ago. Now we were students, office workers, family men and weekend warriors instead of cocky CWOs (chief warrant officers).

The trip up to Cincinnati was an uneventful night flight, no weather to speak of, just high scattered clouds and lots of lights on the ground, unlike the dark of Vietnam’s jungle. Being who we were now, we were all rusty enough at formation flying that we didn’t get too close to each other, so there was no high tension to the flight. Lead knew better than to make any sharp turns and no one wanted to show off since that would not be cool. Once, over-lapping rotor blades coming into hot zones had been “normal,” but not now. Now everyone stayed at least four rotor diameters away from the next aircraft. After LM minutes of wandering our way north, Lead called Lunken tower, “flight of four Hueys five miles south for landing.” Tower cleared us to land and one after another we hovered off the runway onto a dark, empty ramp. In the daylight we would have been a sensation for the civilians at the airport—four military helicopters on the ramp where war machines were rarely, if ever, seen—but at night at a general aviation airport, there is usually no one to see you.

The terminal building at Lunken, Cincinnati’s main airport, was dark and appeared deserted. We all shut down our Hueys and as a group, walked toward the weather office and snack bar inside the main building. As we walked the IHH yards or so, one of the pilots decided he could not wait to get inside to relieve himself, so stopping on the ramp, he un-zipped and proceeded. We all waited a moment for him to finish and then continued as a group.

The first men through the terminal door more or less just stopped barely inside. As the rest of us came in, we were met with the sight of a fancy restaurant inside the terminal, just to the right of the door we had just entered. Every table appeared full, people dressed for a night out, food and wine bottles
and candles lit and sparkling on the tables, but no one was talking or drinking. Every head was looking directly at us.

I looked past the faces turned our way, back through the window out toward the ramp. The glass was clear enough to see through the window from the inside to the outside, but from the ramp the glass was too dark to see from the outside to the inside. The four helicopters parked on the ramp were clearly visible. There, also clearly visible, about half way between the Hueys and the restaurant, was a large dark puddle on the ramp blacktop. No one said a word, but the offending pilot stepped forward and keeping a straight face, took a small bow, and with that, we all proceeded to the weather office and our briefing for the return flight.

When we went back to the aircraft past the restaurant we all looked straight ahead but I did notice that the voices from the tables trailed off as we passed. Maintain cool, always, and pretend that nothing happened. Pilots are usually good at that.

But that was last year and I have to meet minimums this year. Now it’s December 27th and I have to fly tonight because the Aviation Facility is closed after tonight until after New Year’s Day, so it’s fly now or explain to a flight disposition board why I could not manage to do something as simple as get a few hours of nighttime flight in an entire year. Fortunately, I was not alone. My copilot, also a UK student, was in the exact same situation. He only needed one hour but had agreed to stay with me for the entire two hours. He could have said no and I could have been totally by myself for an hour, bouncing a Huey up and down with a sandbag in the left seat to bring it up to the minimum cockpit weight of 240 pounds.

I drove over from Lexington to Frankfort in the rain, thinking black thoughts the entire 40-minute trip. Just blow the two hours off and bluff through the disposition board. Sit in the office for two hours, drink coffee and pencil whip it (just write the time in the log book instead of flying it). No, I would do none of these things. I would hover the God-damned Huey for two hours in the rain. It was my fault I did not get the time so it was now my responsibility to get it.

I am wet from preflighting in the rain. I am pissed off because it is raining and December 27th and I want to be home with my family. I start the aircraft under the red map lights and relax some as I feel the rotor blades start turning as the engine lights off. The Huey is rocking its familiar rhythm as I bring it up to full RPM, taking me back to all my other flights in this model helicopter. The Huey’s sounds fill the world outside my helmet, the high-pitched sounds of the engine turbines and the transmission as the RPM increases, the thump of the rotor blades. The cockpit turns a deep red as I adjust the instrument lights to the level I need, their red lamps glowing dim on the gray dash.

Checklist complete, I turn on both the landing light and searchlight as I lift the aircraft into a three-foot hover. No large “beat” to indicate that the rotor blades are out of balance, no strange vibrations or sounds either—the aircraft is ready to fly. Adding a little collective pitch and a little left rudder as I slightly lower the nose, I move the aircraft out onto the taxiway and hover toward the runway. Frankfort is an uncontrolled field so there is no ground control or tower to talk to, and since the weather is just too bad to fly in, tonight we have it to ourselves.

Before moving onto the airport’s single runway for takeoff, I would make a blind call over the common VHF radio frequency so that any other aircraft coming in to land would know we were there. I hold off making the call since I am not going to take the runway just yet. I stop just short of the runway and slide the Huey left over the grass on the far side of the runway lights. After a moment, I land the aircraft and turn the controls over to the other pilot.

My copilot spends 15 minutes picking the aircraft up to a hover, turning on the spot using the rudder pedals, hovering forward, hovering backwards, sliding left, sliding right, landing, picking up to a hover. The rain continues to fall, our windshield wipers doing their usual miserable job of removing it even with the rotor blades slicing the rain into smaller drops. The OAT (outside air temperature) gauge shows 10 degrees centigrade, still too warm for ice here in a hover, but still too cold to go any higher into the sky. The bleed air heater pulls hot air from the engine to provide warmth inside the aircraft. After 15 minutes, it has brought the cockpit temperature up to something comfortable and is drying my wet flight jacket. Only an hour and a half to go.

As we take turns hovering the Huey around, my thoughts drift in boredom to how the controls work on helicopters. The cyclic controls had exactly the same function on the CH-47Cs that I flew in Vietnam two years ago and the UH-1H I was flying tonight, smart on the Army’s part, since all rotary-wing aviators are qualified in Huey’s. This makes it easier to transition from utility Hueys to cargo Chinooks. The coolie hat on the cyclic works the electric trim in pitch and roll. The top left button releases the springs that hold the cyclic in place.

Through my right flight glove, the cyclic grip feels smooth and natural, its buttons and the trim switch coolie hat switch is right where they should be for easy use; right where I learned they would always be on this model aircraft. My index finger can squeeze the switch on the back of the cyclic to the first detent for ICS, the intercom, and on to the second detent to transmit over the communications radios. My little finger rests on the pickle switch that would release the external load if we had one.

My thumb can move the coolie hat to fine trim the cyclic to whatever position I want to select so that the cyclic will stay there without input from the pilot. You don’t have to use the trim, but if you don’t, you need either to hold it against the springs or use the top left button to release the trim entirely, which you would do for gross control position changes. In combat, particularly when going into a hot zone, the pilot at the controls always trims the stick for level or climbing flight and holds it against the springs for the landing. He does this so that if he is shot and no longer controlling the helicopter, it will start upward and the other pilot will have a chance to get on the controls before it hits the ground.

That’s the theory anyway…

Hueys have a handy set of two red levers on the lower back of the pilot’s armored seats. Pull them both up and the seat rotates backwards so that the shot pilot can be removed from the seat in flight. Handy, that…

My thoughts come back to flying. Hover forward, hover backwards, set down on the skids, lift up to three feet again—another hour and fifteen minutes to go. The rain is still falling. The windshield wipers continue their sweep.

While my right hand works the cyclic, my left hand has the collective pitch lever. On the forward end of the collective is a small box with the beep trim switch and the landing and searchlight switches. The beep trim button is what the pilot uses to set the computer that holds the engine at a particular RPM. On a Huey, it is normally 6,600 RPM, a speed that is neither the rotor speed nor the speed of the compressor in the turbine engine, it’s just a number on the gauge that provides a reference for the pilot to know all is well. Some helicopters show the actual rotor speed, like a Chinook, but not the Huey. The thumb part of the glove that works the beep button is often the first part of the glove to wear out, at least for C model Chinook pilots since you have to often beep one or the other of the engines up or down to keep them matched. Not on a Huey though, only one engine on a Huey, so set it at 6,600 RPM and leave it to the computer to keep it there.

When you try to pull more power than the engine can produce, the rotor speed decreases, you “droop turns.” Sometimes helicopter’s “normal” rotor speed, the one you routinely use for flying, is just a bit above the ideal RPM. That way, when you droop turns, you are actually going toward a more efficient RPM and may be able to gain a momentary advantage. All pilots know it is only momentary and to continue to droop will inevitably result in a loss of altitude. Lose enough rotor RPM and the helicopter will quit flying. If the engine quits you’ve got less than three seconds to get the collective down or your rotor speed will droop so low that you cannot recover. As the instructors said back at Fort Wolters, at that point your rotor blades, your wings, have stalled completely and your craft has all the aerodynamic properties of a footlocker.

The collective has a coolie hat too; only instead of cyclic trim this coolie hat controls the direction of the searchlight. Huey’s have two lights, the landing light which is fixed in position, pointing more down than forward, and the search light, which the pilot can move to see some particular area better. Back at Fort Rucker we were taught to put the searchlight at about a 45 degree angle before takeoff so that if the engine quits you can turn on both the landing and searchlight and use the searchlight to see what’s in front of you as you flare the aircraft to break your rate of descent. At that point the nose is way up and you should be able to see with the landing light.

Gallows humor says that in the event of a complete loss of engine power at night, the pilot should turn on both the landing and searchlights. If he does not like what he sees, he should turn them off.

The throttle on helicopters like the UH-1H and the OH-58A is a twist grip, the same as a motorcycle throttle, only backwards. This caused minor problems for new student pilots back at Fort Wolters but everyone soon got over it. The Huey throttle has a detent that prevents the pilot from completely closing it inadvertently and unintentionally shutting the engine down. To start the Huey you first roll the throttle all the way on, then back it off to the detent, push the release button and move the throttle to just below the detent before you pull the starter trigger. The reason for this is that all sorts of bad things can happen when you start a helicopter.