Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (19 page)

I was the wingman, Chalk Two, in this flight. The other pilot was far more experienced than I, so he would lead and I would follow. Our aircraft were parked across from each other and I could see him looking my way after we were both completely ready to fly. After a “thumbs up” from me, he made the call to ground control for taxi. We got clearance and started to hover out to the takeoff pad. Not used to the turbo lag, I was up and down like a yo-yo all the way out to the takeoff pad. Pull too much power and start to climb above the proscribed three feet, take it off and nearly settle back to the ground—up and down all the 100 yards to the pad. My face was burning because in my head, I could hear the other pilots and ground personnel laughing. In retrospect, I doubt anyone laughed. I doubt anyone noticed because no one paid any attention to another TH-13T hovering out since they came and went all day, every day.

At the takeoff pad, I completed the checklist, at least the OH-13E checklist, never mind I was in a TH-13T. Tower cleared us for takeoff and I added power and began to climb out. Passing through 200 feet, Tower directed us to change to the en route control frequency. I released the collective to reach for the radio dial and found myself in autorotation, headed for the trees directly in front of the aircraft—rapidly headed toward them, the ground coming up fast.

I forgot that the TH-13T, unlike the OH-13E, had a fully boosted collective. As noted earlier, let go of the collective on a 13E and the collective does not move. Without the “power steering” effect of the hydraulic system, the collective does not move until you move it. Not so on the TH-13T. Unless you friction down the collective (a wheel that lets the pilot adjust the feel of the
collective from very light to completely locked), it will fall all the way down as soon as you release it; which is just what it did when I let it go and reached for the radio.

It only took a half second for the situation to register in my brain, but before we reached the trees, I had grabbed the collective back and cranked on throttle to get us climbing again. Tower noticed, “H-13 on takeoff, do you have a problem?”

“Negative, Tower. Switching frequencies,” I replied without too much trembling in my voice. It didn’t matter anyway because I had already lost all cool points for this flight. Not a good start to our three-day trip back to Fort Campbell.

All was well after that because I tightened the friction on the collective enough that I could move it, but it would not fall on its own.

Two other events kept this trip in my mind: the first came after our first refueling stop and RON in Montgomery, Alabama. We could have made it further but we had a late start after signing for and inspecting the aircraft. Also, we did not trust the fuel gauges on the aircraft since neither of us was really qualified in the TH-13T and had no feel for how much fuel it consumed per hour in cruise flight at 75 knots. It is better to do a real world fuel consumption check by seeing how much you burned in cruise, than it is to run out of fuel far from an airfield.

After the hour and a half it took to fly the 80 miles from Fort Rucker, we landed at the civil airfield instead of Maxwell AFB, because we were not required to use military bases and generally speaking, in those days, the civilians were friendlier to old, slow Army helicopters than the Air Force was. We hovered over to one of the FBOs—the people that provide fuel and maintenance for civil (and sometimes military) aircraft. As they usually did, the FBO had a pretty girl in a short skirt wave to get our attention and when we headed in her direction, she guided us into a parking spot. FBOs long ago figured out that pilots prefer pretty girls to greasy mechanics when it comes to ground directors. They sell a lot more fuel that way. We were no exception and followed her direction to their ramp. Besides the pretty ground directors, the FBOs also gave S&H Green Stamps (for those too young to remember, the stamps were part of a rewards program between the 1930s and the 1980s), but we weren’t allowed to take them—might be considered a bribe.

After refueling, we put the covers on the helicopters to bed them down and checked into a motel for the night. The next morning, after preflight and checking weather, we took off on our second leg to Birmingham, Alabama. Our flight path took us directly over the downtown part of Birmingham. As I looked down at the city, I began to nearly panic. At Wolters and Rucker, the instructors taught us what do if your engine quits—how to do an autorotation under nearly all conditions.

If you must go into trees, you plan your flare (to provide an initial break to your very rapid rate of descent) high enough that you are just above the treetops when you have used up all that energy. As the airspeed is converted to lift and your fall stops, you level the nose and as you start to build a descent rate again, hold the helicopter steady so that you settle straight down into the trees. As your skids enter the branches pull, all the collective you have to slow your fall. You want to slow the rotor blades as much as possible before the trees take them off and turn them into projectiles.

If you must go into water with a dead engine, you jettison the doors on the way down if you can. Then as you approach the surface, do the same procedures you would do for going into trees, only when you touch the water, roll the helicopter to the left so that the blades hit the water and stop, then you can get out without getting hit by them.

But how do you autorotate into a city? Pick the building you want to hit and go toward it?

Francis Gary Powers, the U-2 pilot shot down over the USSR in the 1950s, faced this decision when years later, the engine on his traffic helicopter quit over a city. He picked the only open area he could reach in autorotation, but when he got close he could see the field was a playground full of children. Rather than risk hurting them, witnesses on the ground said that at the last second, it looked like he pushed the nose of the helicopter straight down. He impacted the ground short of the field. He died with honor.

As I cleared the city, the feeling of near-panic passed, but ever after, I avoided cities whenever possible. I didn’t want to have to make the decision that Powers did.

The second reason I remember this flight is that my first near mid-air collision happened between Birmingham and Nashville. Near Muscle Shoals, I was cruising along at 75 knots and 1,000 feet when I saw a dot on the right
side of the bubble, just a tiny black spot really. By the time I got my head turned the 45 degrees from straight ahead to 2 o’clock, I was looking at the underside of a jet fighter as it flashed by in what must have been a 90-degree bank. I read the word “NAVY” painted on the underside of his wings as he went by. He must have seen me a second or two before I saw him, giving him time to take evasive action. I had no time to do anything.

Three days and 9.3 flight hours after we left Fort Rucker, we parked the TH-13Ts next to their OH-13E older brothers.

But now, five years later, I was headed north in a flight of three Huey’s, freshly rebuilt from the depot, not old, tired TH-13Ts freed from duty as trainers. Instead of smelling of sweat and student fear like the TH-13Ts, the Hueys smelled of new paint and freshness. They also cruised at 110 knots, not 75. We made Birmingham in 1.8 hours. I remembered clearly the feeling of near-panic the last time I flew this way, but the turbine engine in the Huey made the fear recede almost completely away. Turbines don’t quit as easily as reciprocating engines. In another 1.4 hours we were landing in Nashville for our second refueling stop. Then, 1.4 hours after Nashville, we were shutting down on our parking spots at the Boone National Guard Center in Frankfort, but the day was not over for me.

I called my wife and told her I would be at Bluegrass Field, Lexington’s airport, in an hour and asked her to pick me up. I handed the Huey logbook to the maintenance man and picked up the logbook for the OH-58A, Bureau number 72-21287. I would be flying over to Lexington as soon as I was ready to go. I stowed my bag in the back seat and preflighted the Kiowa in the fading light. Forty-five minutes later, I was hovering out to the runway. Fifteen minutes after that I was landing at Bluegrass, with my wife and son already there waiting for me.

Eighteen clock hours and 8.3 flight hours after I woke up in Gulfport, my day was over. Just like I had been three years before in Vietnam, I was tired, so tired. But the next day, after my son and wife waved goodbye, I flew the OH-58A solo from Lexington, Kentucky, to Fort Eustis, Virginia. Well, not actually Fort Eustis, since we were told not to bring the aircraft into the Army airfields there because there was no ramp space available. Instead, I was to fly into Newport News, the closest civilian field.

I flew across the Appalachians in Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia using a road map and the Cincinnati and Washington Sectional Aeronautical Charts since the aircraft had no navigation radios. It was a boring flight since not only did I have no one to talk to, I could not listen to commercial Am radio because the OH-58A did not have an automatic direction finder (ADF). Since I was not in a hurry, I stopped for refueling in Charleston, West Virginia; Roanoke, Virginia; Lynchburg, Virginia; Navy Norfolk, Virginia; and finally at Newport News. I had arrived for the second half of summer camp after 5 hours of flight time on the second day, for a total of 13.3 for the trip from Gulfport, the most flight time I got in two days in my three years as a Kentucky National Guardsman. Four days later, I flew the OH-58A back to Kentucky with only two fuel stops, Lynchburg and Bristol, Tennessee. My sectionals and road map worked fine for navigation aids both going and coming home. Who needs navigation radios when you have these?

Just under one year later, on June 14, 1975, I flew my final flight in an Army aircraft. It was a very old UH-1B, Bureau Number 60-03562, with the big red buzz numbers still on the doors from its days as a student training aircraft at Ft. Rucker, from Ft. Campbell. I was the copilot on the flight back to the Boone National Guard Center because the other pilot wanted to do a fly-by of the house of a girl he had met the night before. His detour meant that we burned more fuel than we should have, so when we landed at Frankfort after 1.9 hours of flight in a helicopter usually only good for 1.5, there were only fumes left in the fuel tank.

National Guard Mission complete. Luck and superstition got me through again.

Ah, youth…

FLYING LIFE THREE

THE MARINE CORPS

1975–1993

Ever since reading F. Lee Bailey’s “The Defense Never Rests” in Vietnam, I wanted to be a lawyer. With high test scores on the law school admission test, I applied to two law schools and was accepted by both. While walking through the Student Center two days before the deadline for accepting an offer, I saw a film clip of military aircraft flying. It was the USMC Officer Selection Officer, looking for recruits. As we talked I thought back to Covington, Kentucky, seven years before. This time there would be no” rice paddies and all the VC I could kill.” I would be an officer and aviator. After all, F. Lee Bailey had been a naval aviator before he was a lawyer, so I could do it, too. You are never too old to go to law school, but you can get too old for flying. That evening I asked my wife what she thought about it and when she said flying stories were more interesting than law stories, I knew she was right. I turned down law school and enlisted in the USMC.

17

NIGHT VISION GOGGLES

YUMA, ARIZONA ■ AUGUST 1978

To learn tactics and advanced tactics is complicated and requires an extended period of flying with experienced pilots. Once the officer has advanced completely through the syllabus in the squadron, and has shown promise as an instructor, he may be sent to Weapons Tactics Instructor (WTI) School, the most prestigious flying course I ever attended—and the most fun…

T
he second Marine Aviation Weapons and tactics Instructor class at Marine Weapons and tactics Squadron-1 (mAWtS-1), conducted at Marine Corps Air Station, Yuma, Arizona in the fall of 1978, was going very well indeed. All the students were very experienced aviators, and aviation support personnel from all portions of Marine Corps air wing had been hand selected for their skill and were to be the future trainers of the Marine Corps tactical pilots and air controllers. As the instructors always told us when they had something particularly difficult in mind for us to do: “we were the cream of the crop—never again would we be as technically and tactically proficient in our aircraft, as Marines, as we would be when we graduated from this course.”

But even the cream of the crop can make mistakes.

On the first day of class, the major who was the lead helicopter instructor walked in flanked by two of his assistant instructors. One assistant was ceremoniously carrying a frozen chicken and the other was carrying a feather pillow held out reverently before him in both hands.

“Gentlemen,” the chief instructor began, “You will shortly all be issued one of these chickens and a pillow. If by chance, you should happen to hit a saguaro cactus while flying in this course, you will land your helicopter immediately, stuff the chicken in the hole, and cut open the pillow with your survival knife, sprinkle feathers all around, and swear you had a bird strike. Are there any questions about this procedure?”

It seems a student in the last class had hit an endangered cactus, thereby damaging his CH-53 and coincidentally giving away the fact that he was flying lower than allowed, “flat hatting,” as it is called in Naval aviation. It has been a problem since the first aircraft got off the ground. It often leads to a situation where the pilot “ties the record for low flying.” You can’t break the record but when you impact the surface you do tie it, adding your name to the way-too-long list of pilots who died doing something they knew they shouldn’t.

Mid-way through the four-week course we went into the main classroom for instruction on “Night Vision Goggles” (NVG). None of us students had ever heard of “Night Vision Goggles” until we got to Yuma, but if they would help us see better for night missions, we were all for them. Every aviator has scary stories about night flight or “night fright,” as it was often called, as witnessed by the night firebase resupply and flare drop missions I had flown. One saying went that only bats and twats flew at night, leaving which we were open for discussion. MAWTS-1 had every single pair of NVGs the Marine Corps owned at that time, 20 sets in all.

One rule every soldier must know is that tracers work both ways; that is, you can see where your bullets are going but the enemy can see where they are coming from. The same is true for light sources like flares or search-lights. You may be able to see the enemy using them, but they can see you too. NVGs allowed us to see the enemy, but because they are passive, the enemy could not see the source of what was providing us with vision.

The goggles are passive because they work by amplifying ambient light. The first generation NVGs really needed moonlight, the more the better. Starlight worked somewhat if it was a very clear night, but not very well to see clearly through the lenses. NVGs were not originally developed for flying. The original units were monocular “Starlight” scopes developed for use by snipers in Vietnam. Other original uses included vehicle drivers, sentries, etc., who used the goggles instead of artificial light. The ones we would use were developed for vehicle drivers and had not been modified for us in aircraft.

After a lecture on light frequencies, emergency removal procedures, and how to mount the NVGs on our helmets, the WTI cadre passed out the goggles. They were very heavy, so much so that they had to be counterbalanced to keep you from injuring your neck by just wearing them. The twenty-eight ounces of dead weight hanging on the front of your flight helmet had to be balanced by lead plates hung on the back of your helmet using Velcro attachments. We had to have our helmets modified so that we could strap the goggles on and then snap them down so they wouldn’t fall off in flight. The staff stressed how important it was to take good care of them because they were very expensive and delicate; never mind, as they reminded us over and over again, that the few sets they handed out to us were every pair the Marine Corps owned.

As mentioned, the NVGs work by taking existing light and amplifying it. The pilot sees two round images, one for each eye, on what is, in effect, a miniature monochrome green-tinted television screen. The NVGs could be adjusted for diopter and focus. Actually, they had to be adjusted for focus when you wanted to look from outside the aircraft to inside the cockpit. This first generation NVG was “full face,” meaning that when they were attached to your helmet you could not see around them, the pilot could only see through them in two circles of green light that provided only 40 degrees of vision. The NVGs also were designed to protect themselves by momentarily shutting down when exposed to too much light, thus preventing tube burnout. More on this later…

Our instructors were confident, even though they had barely more experience with NVGs than we did. At least they did what all military aviators always do, and acted cool in the face of a very new procedure, as in “death before embarrassment.” As the head of the Helicopter Branch explained, “this is going to be a little harder than usual, but you guys can hack it.” We agreed because we were all “hackers” or we wouldn’t be there—and because, being aviators ourselves, we too were acting cool.

At the preflight mission briefing, a light should have come on or alarm bells gone off inside our heads when the instructor said, “Normally, you wouldn’t want to do this unless the moon was a little higher and brighter.” In the Marine Corps, a statement like that almost guarantees something bad is going to happen. It is almost like Marines aren’t happy unless there is some pain, physical or psychological, in all events. But the briefing officer again stressed that we were the cream of the crop and could handle it.

That was the theory anyway…

My instructor and I had grown to be friends during the time I had been at mAWtS-1. Like me, he had flown in Vietnam, Marine 46s instead of Army 47s, in I Corps, the northern-most part of the country, just like me. He too had lots of total flight time and was very relaxed about the whole WTI thing, be it going one-on-one with fighters, nap-of-the-earth flying, evading missiles, flying on NVGs, whatever. He also had a slight tendency to stutter occasionally, but it was never a problem, since it mostly happened when he was drinking and no matter what, he did not drink and fly.

After going through the normal crew briefing, preflight, and start up, we taxied our CH-46F out to the runway and took off for Laguna Army Airfield, to the northeast of Yuma. I can’t say the crew chief and first Mec (mechanic, a crew chief in training) were very happy about it because anything new made them uncomfortable, and the NVGs were definitely new, but they trusted us enough to get in the back of the helicopter and go flying. Or perhaps I should say that they were Marines and did as ordered. In either case, it was full darkness when we landed at Laguna to “goggle up” and get that training “X” in the box. Only the pilots would be on NVGs, since we did not have enough for the crew to wear them too, meaning that even though we might be able to see, the crew had only blackness to look at, yet another thing that made them less than happy. The sky was clear but the moon, forecast to be small and low, was nowhere to be seen as we started our training evolution.

After landing in the sand next to the runway at Laguna, I held the flight controls while the instructor rigged our aircraft. As they told us in ground school training, these early NVGs were very sensitive to certain portions of the light spectrum, particularly the red portion. Unfortunately it was the same red commonly used in aircraft to preserve pilot’s night vision, so the red of our normal cockpit lighting would cause the lenses to shut down to protect themselves from overload and burnout. In fact, any bright light in the visual spectrum would shut them down. They warned us in class that if the NVGs were getting too much light, they would show what looked like a test pattern and shut themselves down. When the light source was removed or you looked away from it, the NVGs would come back on in about five seconds.

Five seconds is a very long time when you are close to the ground in a helicopter and cannot see outside the cockpit.

After completing the taping over of all our cockpit lights (a pin hole was left in some of the taped over lights, e.g. The fire warning lights, the master caution lights, etc., so that we would know when they came on and we had an emergency), the instructor put his goggles on. As I watched him, I noticed that it was a moderately “dark” night. Yes, there was finally a moon but it was only a thin sliver, just above the mountains. I hoped this wouldn’t be too bad, but had a lot of confidence in my own ability and after all, I had one of those “God-like” instructors in the other seat. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen to us.

The instructor took the controls and told me to put my own goggles on. It took me a lot longer than it took him, since I was doing it only for the second time. I finally got them on and was looking out the right cockpit window, trying to adjust them when I saw another CH-46 go past us, just outside our rotors at about what seemed like 40 or 50 knots, flying backwards.

The instructor saw it too and was on the radio immediately, “46 on Luguna, you’re drifting backwards. YOU ARE DRIFTING BACKWARDS! You damn near ran us over!” he yelled into the mic. No stutter in his voice that time.

The pilot of the other helo “rogered” our call with only a minor shake in his voice to betray his fear at not knowing where his helicopter was going, and although we could no longer see them, he assured us that they were stabilized. It was another warning we did not pay attention to. If he can’t see, what made us think we could? Ah, we’re hackers and he isn’t. That must be it.

Our crew chief had been listening to the radios and called from the back, “Got them in sight. They’re well clear.” that helped, but it was not a good start and promised that this would not be an easy flight.

I now had my goggles on and mostly adjusted, and while I could see a green, snowy picture of the world outside the cockpit of the 46, I could not see very much else. I also could not see my hands or the instruments. The green toilet paper tube-like, circular view through the twin lenses of the NVGs was only 40 degrees, not the 180 plus pilots normally have.

The instructor had me get on the controls with him as he pulled the aircraft up into a hover. I felt slightly disoriented as we lifted but followed him through as he moved the cyclic stick and collective. It was strange not being able to see the stick with my peripheral vision as he maneuvered the aircraft. I felt disconnected from normal reality and disoriented. No problem though, I was with an instructor…

He did a few hovering turns and then sat the aircraft back down, only bouncing slightly. I could not see well enough to tell if we wobbled or not when we were in a hover. I had adjusted one eye to focus inside the cockpit and one eye to focus out, like they told us in class. Since the man flying had to adjust both eyes out of the cockpit to see where he was going, he could not see any of the instruments to tell how high he was, how fast he was going, how much power he had pulled in, what course he was on, or anything else. The other pilot watched all those with his one eye and called them out to the man at the controls. With the other eye, he would look out the window to make sure they weren’t about to fly into another aircraft or a mountain.

That was the theory anyway…

The instructor lifted the helicopter into a hover again and when I told him “all green” he nosed the aircraft forward for takeoff. As we climbed out, I called altitudes and airspeeds. In that trip around the traffic pattern, both altitude and airspeed varied to the point where it was like the first time a new flight student tried it in flight school, even though an experienced helicopter aircraft commander (HAC) was flying. After a shaky landing, he passed me the controls and it was my turn. I felt the seat cushion start up my rear end as the pucker factor kicked in.

I was apprehensive, but, by God if he could do it, so could I. After adjusting my goggles so that both eyes were focused outside the aircraft, I took the controls and pulling power, wobbled into hover. I couldn’t see my hands or the stick position indicator to see how far back the stick was as I added collective. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that pilots, or at least helicopter pilots, actually see the position of the flight controls with their peripheral vision and use that as a reference of where they should be for the maneuver.

As we lifted up, I could not tell how high we were, I had no idea if we were in the prescribed 10-foot hover or were at 50 feet or 2 feet. I knew we were drifting in our hover, even though I was using all the experience and skill gained over nine years of helicopter flying to try to keep us steady. I was trying to crush the cyclic grip and my legs were ridged on the pedals. Taking a deep breath and slowly blowing it out, I tried to relax some.

I finally was more or less stabilized in a hover when a car on the outskirts of the airfield turned toward us and his headlights hit the cockpit. As advertised in class, my goggles went blank. No, not really blank, blank. Just as the instructors told us, all I could see was what looked like a green fuzzy test pattern of the sort TV stations used to show when they weren’t on the air.