Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (15 page)

The first is a hot start. In a hot start, instead a rising normally, the engine temperature shoots way past the normal range and can quickly damage the engine or even give you an engine fire. To counter it, you close the throttle and motor the engine without fuel to suck in air and cool it down.

In some aircraft the next possible problem is a “quick start.” In this situation, instead of the engine turning up normally, a rather slow orderly process, the engine immediately goes to full power. This time the danger is to the entire drive train; engine, transmission, tail rotor drive shaft, 42 degree gear box, 90 degree gear box, etc. Again the procedure is to close the throttle and remove fuel from the engine.

My armed helicopter flight instructor at Fort Rucker had an abbreviated procedure for starting the Huey. He was an old UH-IC “Charlie Model” gunship pilot between tours in Vietnam and had apparently lost all fear of death. Maybe he thought that death was waiting for him back in Vietnam and nothing would kill him in Alabama, I don’t know because WOCs didn’t ask instructors things like that. Instructors were gods and gods would not let you down.

His preflight consisted of comparing the number he wrote in ink on the web of his left hand with the number in big orange letters on the side of the helicopter. If they matched, he untied the aircraft and climbed in. His checklist did not consist of the normal JM or KH items, instead it was: seat belt on, helmet and gloves on, then battery on, fuel on, throttle full open then closed to the detent and moved just below it. He would yell out the open door, “CLEAR,” warning anyone close to the aircraft he was starting it and pull the start trigger. When the igniters (think of them as sparkplugs used for lighting off a turbine)
began their electrical “snap, snap, span” he would smile and look like the happiest man in the world. As soon as the engine started winding up he would roll the throttle full on, and while adjusting the beep to bring it to 6,600 RPM he would turn on the radios, slam the door closed and call for taxi, checklists be damned.

The throttle setting on the Huey is completely different from the Kiowa, the OH-58A or Jet Ranger in its civil version, which we also flew here in the Guard. On the 58, you start with the throttle closed and wind it up when the engine reaches a certain RPM. It is easy to see that a pilot has forgotten which aircraft he is flying and uses the Huey procedure on the Kiowa. There is a roar and a ball of flame when the engine lights off, instead of the steadily increasing whine of the turbine. No damage, no foul, most of the time.

I turn the controls back over to the other pilot. It is again his turn to hover around the field for a while. Just to do something different, he lowers the nose and begins a takeoff run over the grass paralleling the runway. The rain hits harder against the windshield as we gather speed, increasing the drip on my leg from the bad seal. He holds the aircraft ten feet off the ground as we pass the shudder of translational lift. As the end of the field approaches, he goes into a slight side flare to slow the aircraft without the danger of sticking the tail rotor into the ground. Stable in a hover now, he pedal turns the aircraft 180 degrees and does it again headed in the opposite direction. The wind appears to be calm so it doesn’t really matter which direction we takeoff. Thirty minutes to go.

The rudder petals adjust back and forth using a knob on the deck of the helicopter in front of the cyclic. A Huey’s rudder petals are substantial metal things with “Bell,” the company that manufactured them, in raised letters on them. In American and British helicopters, the rotors turn counterclockwise when you add power, while in French and Russian helicopters they turn clockwise. Why? Beats me, but they do. For the pilot, the difference is that in American single rotor helicopters, you add left rudder when you lift up. In the Russian and French helicopters, you add right. Of course, to an experienced pilot it makes no difference since they only add what rudder is required, i.e. if the wind is strong enough from the right you might add right rudder instead of left when you lift to a hover. Fifteen minutes to go.

It is still raining and windshield wipers still slide back and forth across the Plexiglas. I am thinking of the first time I ever sat in a Huey cockpit. Back at Fort Rucker, in the summer of 1969, we were about to finish up our instrument training in the TH-13t Sioux and start our transition to the Huey. We were strongly encouraged to learn the start checklist before we actually got to the flying part of training so that the instructors would not have to waste time on trivia and could move into the actual flying part. We were told to go to one of the three main heliports at Fort Rucker and dry practice, that is go through the start checklist without actually moving any of the switches, of course. I was sitting in the cockpit of a D model Huey dutifully dry practicing when a maintenance contractor came up and asked me to start her up. He needed to check something and the aircraft had to be running to do the check. Part of me wanted so badly to fire that Huey up, but I didn’t do it. I was too close to finishing up to risk damaging a Huey and getting washed out.

When you washed out of flight school in 1969, they handed you a rifle and sent you to the rice paddies. And that was no theory…

Ten minutes to go. I hover the aircraft back into the National Guard compound still holding a standard three-foot hover. We fudge the last five minutes and shut it down. The rain is still falling as we sit and watch the rotor slow to a stop. The Huey doesn’t have rotor brake so we “help” it slow down by adding full left rudder, putting pitch on the tail rotor blades to use up a little of the energy left as the rotor blades slow to a stop. I climb out of the cockpit into the rain and throw the rope end of the blade tie-down strap over the forward stopped blade and pull it down so that I can put the metal hook in the ring on the end of the blade. I walk the blade around the aircraft until I can tie the rope end to the tail boom. My copilot joins me as I am finishing up and we walk back over to Operations to close out the aircraft log book for this flight and my flying for the year.

One hour later I am back home in Lexington and am again a student. My flight suit is still damp as I climb out of my car.

Private Bob Curtis during basic training at Fort Polk, Loisiana, 1968.

Curtis as a Warrant Officer Candidate (WOC), Fort Wolters, Texas, 1969.

WOC Curtis with an OH-23D “Raven” at Fort Wolters, Texas, 1969.

CW2 Curtis with CH-47C in revetment at Camp Evans, Vietnam, 1971.

CH-47C carrying 500 gallons of fuel or water bladders (aka Elephant Nuts), Camp Eagle, Vietnam, 1971.

UH-1H shot down in Laos, one of 107 helicopters lost during Lam Son 719, 1971.

Battle damage to Playtex 820 flown by CW2 Curtis, March 4, 1971.

Curtis with silenced M3 grease gun, 1971.