Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (23 page)

After that, we moved as unobtrusively as we could to our rendezvous point, seeing no one else on the way. After four hours, we arrived at twilight to find a platoon of Marine grunts sitting right where we were supposed to leave the stack of rocks for the rescuing SEALs to find. Our SEAL left us in hiding and went to find out what the grunts were up to. He returned about ten minutes later.

“Why would a CH-53D spin around in circles and throw things out the back?” he asked.

My reply was, “Exercise over,” as we three “escapees” and the SEAL ran as hard as we could toward the grunt’s camp.

When I came over the small hill between us and the grunts, I could see the 53 on the ground, still looking like a CH-53D, but with a major airframe change. Instead of being JM feet or so high, the top of the rotor hub was only about eight feet off the ground. All the rotor blades and the tail rotor blades were still on the upright aircraft but the fuselage was crushed, smashed down. The two main landing gear struts were driven up completely through the structure. One or both fuel tanks had ruptured, leaving the smell of jet fuel heavy in the air, but thankfully, the fuel had not ignited. Inside the CH-53D there were four dead men, crushed by the transmission coming down inside the cabin, but five men had survived, three in the cabin, and both pilots.

The CH-53D was supposed to pick us up for the E&E exercise. Since we weren’t there when the aircraft landed, the HAC picked up some backpacks to carry out to the waiting infantrymen instead. Several Marines that had been guarding the packs climbed onboard too. After flying the short distance to the LZ, the pilots brought the 53 into a 100-foot hover to select a good landing spot. Just as they arrived in the hover, the crew chief opened the rear ramp hatch to see the LZ better. As he did, the hatch actuator broke through its mount on the inside of the helicopter’s roof and went into the tail rotor drive shaft. The actuator acted like a lathe and cut the shaft in two, resulting in total loss of tail rotor thrust. Without the tail rotor to counteract the torque created by the main rotor in a hover, the aircraft went into a violent flat spin in the opposite direction of the turning main rotor.

If you are in forward flight and lose tail rotor thrust, the aircraft speed may keep the fuselage streamlined enough to allow the pilots to do a high-speed running landing like a fixed-wing normally does. In a hover, complete recovery from loss of tail rotor thrust is nearly impossible. You are quite probably going to crash. The only question is how. Will the pilot be able to maintain some control or is he just a passenger until impact? The only real option the pilot has to maintain at least minimal control is to remove the torque from the aircraft by shutting down the engines. One of the pilots did exactly that as the 53 began its violent spin. Even though the aircraft was spinning at a terrifying rate, one of the pilots managed to reach the engine controls and shut both engines off. As he did so, the spin stopped, but now they were falling straight down, straight down from 100 feet.

Had one of the pilots not shut down the engine, it is very unlikely that anyone would have survived. The CH-53D would have hit the ground out of control and the operating turbine engines would probably have ignited the fuel from the ruptured tanks, creating a giant fireball and leaving only shards of blackened, melted aluminum.

Both pilots survived the impact of the 100-foot fall, their seats absorbing some of the force. Both were unconscious and badly hurt, but alive, as were three of the men in the main cabin. The other four in the cabin were dead, some from the impact, some crushed by the transmission as it came down.

After medevac from Spain to Germany and treatment at the big hospital at Frankfort, both the pilots were well enough to return to duty several months later. The major and the aircraft commander moved on to another assignment. The first lieutenant copilot was promoted to captain and returned to the squadron in time for our next LF6F. One year after the crash in Spain he was in the front seat of the Cobra, taking an orientation flight, a “dollar ride,” that soft Greek spring day. There was no surviving this one.

We were supposed to be in the back of that aircraft, but because I had been bored waiting for it, we were not. Luck and superstition?

For the longest time, we sat there on the banks of that Greek river, engines burning and rotors turning, watching the small crowd of men in the river working with what was left of the Cobra. After a while, I saw some of them bring something to the shore and then return for another load. We were too far away to see exactly what it was, but that wasn’t necessary. I knew. After wrapping the loads they carried ashore in ponchos or some similar material, they lifted both bundles onto waiting stretchers and started carrying them toward my helicopter.

“Corporal,” I called over the ICS, but I didn’t have to. He was watching and had already begun folding up some troop seats and stowing them against the side of the cabin so that we could put the stretchers inside. I watched him in the cockpit rear view mirror as he made the cabin ready for the remains of our squadron mates.

I continued watching in the mirror as the stretchers and their loads were carried up the ramp and strapped down. everyone except the CO got back off the aircraft and stood just outside the rotor disk looking back at us. The CO climbed back in through the ramp but he strapped into one of troop seats in the back instead of coming up to the cockpit. The crew chief offered him a long cord to hookup to the ICS but he didn’t take it. He just looked forward, toward the cockpit, and without really looking, sadly gave a thumbs up to signal that he was ready to go. “All set in back,” the crew chief called over the ICS. The copilot and I completed the checklist, turned three on, and lifting directly into forward flight without a hover check, I climbed the aircraft up from the riverbank and turned toward the sea and our ship. Just before crossing the shore, we did our “feet wet” checklist, nose wheel and brakes locked, and headed to the ship, three miles out to sea.

“Center, 04, feet wet inbound, four souls onboard, one point oh to splash, two routine medevac,” I called over the control center radio channel, “Purple” in ship speak.

“Roger 04,” Center replied, “Cherubs three, your signal Charley. What assistance do you need? Say state of medevacs. How many corpsmen do you need?” all came out in a rush.

“Center, 04, two routine medevac. Require four stretcher bearers,” I replied.

“04, Center. Say state of medevac,” Center said again, more urgently this time.

In Vietnam what I was doing had been a normal course of events for those of us who flew the helicopters—men died every day and every day helicopters brought them into the hospital, but the peacetime Navy was not used to wartime radio calls, and for a moment I lost it.

“Center, 04. Both men are dead. this is a routine medevac. All I need are the stretcher bearers. Do you understand?” I shouted into the mic.

For a long moment there was silence. Then Center said, “Roger, 04. Switch tower when ready.”

My copilot changed the radio frequency as I headed down the starboard side in a normal approach pattern. When I passed just ahead of the ship, I turned across the bow, maintaining my 300 feet, to roll out on the course opposite of the ship’s course. When I called “abeam,” Tower cleared us to land spot 4. I rolled smoothly into a bank, turning the helicopter to 45 degrees off the ship’s course and reducing power to descend. As the helicopter crossed the deck edge, I saw the men that would carry the two body bags below, standing by the island in their white float vests with the red cross on them, waiting. I came in without stopping in a hover to position over the landing spot. Instead, I landed the helicopter immediately on spot 4, with the wheels exactly in the three boxes marking the proper position. I did it to the best of my ability, to give them, my squadron mates, their last ship landing as smoothly and as close to perfect as I could.

Once on deck, I waited while my copilot turned three off and the green-shirted deck handlers installed the chocks and chains. I looked back into the cabin through the rear view mirror and watched the men lift the two stretchers and move down the ramp. I did not watch them as they carried their loads to the starboard elevator to go below to the ship’s hospital and on to the morgue. I gave the “drinking” hand signal for refueling to the yellow-shirted LSE. He signaled for the purple-shirted refuelers and my copilot and I sat without talking while they pumped the fuel into the tanks. When it was complete, I signaled for takeoff. At the yellow shirt’s signal, the blue shirts ran under the rotor disk, pulled the chalks, and removed the three chains holding my 46 to the deck. They ran back out and held them for me to count so I would know all restraints were removed from the aircraft.

Chocks and chains off, the copilot turned three on, and after a “ready aft” from the crew chief, I lifted the helicopter into a hover at the LSE’s signal. my copilot called “gauges good to go” and I slid left as I added power and lowered the nose, we crossed the deck edge climbing and gathering speed and we were on our way back to our base camp on the beach. The death of two comrades and the loss of an aircraft does not end your mission.

Every flight requires you go into a room in your mind where there is nothing but the mission you have been assigned, nothing but flying. When you enter, you must close the door to that room behind you, shutting out everything else and look at nothing but the flight in front of you. Fail to do so and you may join the lost aircrew in death.

I closed the door to the room they died in, stepped into the one for flying, and my mission continued. The mission must be done. Always.

20

EXTERNALS

CAMP LEJEUNE, NORTH CAROLINA ■ MAY 1980

Very, very few people are natural pilots. Most people who become pilots learn slowly and while they are learning, they are very, very dangerous to everyone else because they are inept. But even more dangerous than normal slow learners, are the few that are “naturals,” the ones born to fly. They are more dangerous because they sometimes come without the fear of death. They have to be taught that their abilities will not save them if they take the aircraft too far or think their skill will get them out of a situation that no one can resolve.

M
CAS New River, as are all Marine Corps Air Stations, is named for a local feature. Some are named for a town—MCAS Beaufort and MCAS Yuma come to mind. Some are named for geographic features, like MCAS Cherry Point named after a point of land on the Neuse River. MCAS New River is named for the New River, the brown, yellow, muddy feature that separates the base from Camp Lejeune. The New River is a bit unusual since it begins and ends in Onslow County, North Carolina, starting as a black water creek in a swamp that becomes an alligator swamp until it changes downstream into a wide, very shallow river that passes on the south side of the air field. The Marine Corps’ east Coast training Squadron for cargo helicopters, HMT-204, is located at MCAS New River.

HMT is marine for “Helicopter Marine Training,” as opposed to “Hmm,” Helicopter Marine Medium, the name of all tactical CH-46 squadrons. HMT-204 provided training for both the CH-46 and the CH-53D. The squadron’s aircraft were all parked at the east end of New River’s concrete ramp, arranged in neat rows by aircraft type, the more numerous CH-46’s here and the CH-53’s there. Flight Operations at HMT-204 normally consisted of two day launches, one in the morning and one in the afternoon during the week. There were three types of flights: student training flights, instructor training flights, and maintenance check flights. Night training flights went out two or three times a week. If the student throughput load was light, the squadron took the weekend off.

Instructors in HMT-204 were generally cruised-out captains finishing out their first Fleet Marine Corps tour, meaning they were assigned there from the deploying squadrons after completing two six-month LF6F deployments. They would be instructors for, at most, a year before they went off to Amphibious Warfare School or headquarters duty or some other non-Fleet assignment. even now, Fleet tours are the only ones that are really important to a Marine. Why would you want to be a Marine if you weren’t in the “Fleet,” where real Marine things are done? My HMT-204 tour would be longer than most since I got there much faster than usual, and I completed the Marine Corps’ aviation training program sooner than a typical pilot due to my prior aviation service with the Army. It doesn’t take nearly as long to train a pilot who already knows how to fly, so I got to the Fleet as a second lieutenant and finished my two med cruises much sooner than typical.

I was a prime candidate for HMT-204. I was cruised out and had been on station at New River for less than three years. I was easy to train as a CH-46F instructor since my instructor career had started in wooden rotorbladed OH-13es in 1969. After that, I was the company senior instructor pilot in Chinooks in 1971 in Vietnam. There, I flew the first 25 hours with all newbies, gave copilot and aircraft commander check rides, and trained new instructor pilots (IPs). During the time I had been an instructor, I had seen about all types of pilots come through training. I flew with cocky ones, scared ones, marginally competent ones, all types except a truly natural pilot—someone who took to flying completely and so thoroughly that instruction seems superfluous. Oh, I had known a couple of natural pilots, men who did everything so effortlessly that you could not help but feel somehow inadequate, but I never had one as a student.

One day at HMT-204, I finally had one.

Natural pilots, on the surface, look like everyone else, unlike many athletes who seem designed for their sport. It’s not that their eyes are better than other pilots since all military aviators start with at least 20/20 vision. Nor are they more physically fit, as all military pilots start out in excellent health and fitness. Ground school is not an indicator. It is very possible to ace every test they throw at you and still be a terrible pilot, and it’s possible to squeak by on tests and fly like eddie Rickenbacker (medal of Honor recipient and WWI fighter ace). The only way to tell if someone is a natural is to take them flying, hence the aeronautical adaptability programs some services run. Take the prospect up in a light aircraft and see if they take to flying, thereby weeding out the weak ones early. After that it is up to the flight school instructors to complete the selection, to decide who makes it and who doesn’t.

The brief that morning was normal in all respects. I had reviewed the student’s training record and saw only the way-too-normal write-ups by lazy flight instructors, “good flight, no problems,” which tells you absolutely nothing. Our flight today was to be the lieutenant’s first external load mission. Like all naval aviators, he had done a few easy externals in flight school but at Pensacola, they used light weights, usually small concrete blocks that were well below the maximum weight limit for the Hueys he was flying.

I had first learned how to handle externals using Huey’s in Army flight school, but just like Navy flight training, the lesson was quick and the loads were light. When I got to Chinook transition, prior to Vietnam, the sling load training got serious; moving external loads was the aircraft’s primary mission. The serious sling load training took place at Fort McClellan, up near Anniston, Alabama.

To save on manpower and more importantly, to teach us how hard a job the hookup man has, we students would do all the attaching of the loads. After a five-minute class, complete with a warning that if we did not properly ground the aircraft with the grounding wand, the static electricity the aircraft generated would knock you on your ass, if not kill you outright, we were considered trained. The instructor would land and drop us off in the field with the loads and a list of which ones we were to hookup and in what order, as the helicopter came in for pickup. We would go to the appointed load and climb up on top holding the “donut”—a heavy-duty ring of nylon cloth holding all the legs of the sling together—and the grounding wand.

The idea was to touch the cargo hook with the wand and then slide the donut on the hook with the wand still touching. The aircraft would land short of the load and hover forward. The IHH-knot rotor wash would hit you as they came to a hover and build as they came over you. You were looking up at the flight engineer through the hellhole as he directed the student pilot to come left, right, back, forward, as required to position the cargo hook over the load. Once the student pilot got the aircraft close enough to the donut for you to reach it, the flight engineer would direct the student pilot to come down until at last you, the hookup man, could get the donut on the hook. Once the donut was secured to the hook, we would jump off the top of the load and run away from the rotor wash before they began to lift the load off the ground.

With the Chinooks, we had all types of loads: trucks, old helicopter fuselages, an old airplane or two, and of course, concrete blocks of various weights, right up to the maximum the aircraft could handle. The cement block practice loads were all labeled with their weight painted on the sides and top. The aircraft practice loads did not have their weights listed but were all light enough to be well within the limits of the aircraft. Even so, the aircraft were far more difficult to carry than the cement blocks; even with their wings removed, they presented a lot of surface area for a light weight to the air as you began forward flight. They would swing back and forth and twist around, unlike the cement blocks which generally just hung straight down. The blocks were small and heavy, nearly perfect loads, at least perfect loads for student pilots because you couldn’t hurt them if you dragged them across the ground on landing or even dropped them before they touched down.

It was quite a sight, that huge helicopter wobbling a few feet above you as the student pilot tried to get the aircraft into position to hook up the load. You could tell instantly whether the student or the instructor was flying. The aircraft was steady and the hookup quick if the instructor was flying. If the aircraft wobbled and drifted up and down, right and left, backward and forward, it was the student. But of course the first hookup was always the instructor as he demonstrated the maneuver—all the rest would be the student.

Who was flying was particularly worrying on the last load of the training flight because they would not land to pick up the student pilot acting as hookup man. Instead, after the last load was securely on the donut, the pilot at the controls would lower the aircraft down to the point where the hookup man could climb onboard through the hellhole. To get that low, the student pilot would have to bring the Chinook down to where it was only a few feet above the concrete block. If he wobbled badly, he could easily crush the hookup man between the aircraft and the load. The instructors did it to show you how much you must appreciate the danger hookup men face on each and every load. The pilot must always respect the hookup man and be as smooth as possible during the procedure because his life is literally in your hands every time you pick up a load.

I remembered standing on the load and climbing up into the aircraft later when I was flying in Vietnam, watching the hookup men risk their lives on every load. While hovering forward to pick up a load of 105-howitzer ammo one day, I saw the legs of the sling were fouled, partially stuck under the ammo, preventing the hookup man from lifting the donut above his head. Instead, he was lying on his back on top of the load, holding the donut about a foot above his chest. To hook the load up, I would have to get the hook one foot above him. The slightest twitch on my part and he would be dead. What trust he had in us pilots, or was it just that he was IQ and nothing could hurt him?

Another time, we were extracting a mountaintop firebase while it was under attack. Mortars were exploding all over the hill as we came roaring up the mountain side in a cyclic climb, trading airspeed for altitude while keeping the aircraft as close to the trees as possible to stay out of the enemy machine gunner’s sights. We needed to hook up the IHMs as quickly as possible and jerk them off the ground and over the hillside before the mortars got us. As we crossed the wire around the perimeter, the hookup man would jump up on top the gun and stand there with the donut held over his head while the explosions went off all around the hilltop, black flashes and shrapnel flying through the air. Time after time they stood there until all the guns were hooked up and gone. Doing it once and it could be that you were just pissed off at the enemy for shooting at you; doing it time after time and even though you know that death waits, requires a conscious decision. But then, hooking up loads is the mission for these men. The mission must be done.

Later I reflected on the fact that the NVA had about IM seconds to get me when I came up on top of that hill, but those soldiers stood there for at least KH seconds time after time. Like I said, do it once and maybe you were just not thinking about it, but do it over and over and you are brave. The hookup men were brave men, all of them

But those days are gone, at least temporarily. Now safety comes first, so no climbing through hell holes and no student hookup men. Here in peacetime, our training would take place down the New River on a small peninsula that stuck out in the river on the Camp Lejeune side, close to where the AMTRAKs, the big amphibious assault vehicles Marines use to get from ship to the shore, are based. There will be no mortars exploding or shrapnel flying and with a real helicopter landing zone team doing the hook ups, not another student pilot. The advantage of this remote location is simply because there is nothing else there; if the student inadvertently drops a load, it is only going to hit the water, not someone. It happened often enough that we instructors joked among ourselves that the bottom of New River was paved with cement blocks students had dropped into the water.

As with every hop, I quizzed the student about what we were going to do on this flight. His knowledge was average at best, but he was qualified. Preflight, start, and taxi were normal. His taxi out to the active runway was as smooth as I had ever seen, unusual for a student only halfway through the syllabus. As I always do, I took control of the aircraft for the first takeoff, but as soon as we were safely established in a climb, I turned the 46 over to the student. He rolled out on the correct heading and stayed firmly on altitude and airspeed, again, a bit unusual for a student. I was impressed, always a problem. It should have been a warning sign, like the big, red master caution light on the dash of the helicopter.

The LZ control team was already on site when we arrived. I took the flight controls back from my student and landed the 46 close to them. The team leader came over to just outside the rotor disk and gave me a thumbs up, indicating that they were ready to go. I would do the first load and talk the student through what I was doing as I demonstrated the procedures.

The normal CH-46 “three on” and an “all set aft” later, I lifted the helicopter to a 20 foot hover. The crew chief announced that we were clear to the rear and I moved the helicopter backwards until I had a clear sight of the load with the hookup man standing on top of it. His assistant was next to him with the grounding pole. I hovered forward and with the crew chief’s direction, quickly hooked up the load.

“Come straight up. Tension coming on. Up. Load’s off, up 20. Load’s off 20, cleared to go,” the crew chief called.

We flew the traffic pattern with the load riding smoothly beneath us. I talked about what to do if the load starts to swing and the possible troubles if it did. Once in Vietnam, when I was still a copilot, I had a vivid demonstration of one of the worst-case scenarios, “settling with power.” Settling with power is a condition that can rapidly turn fatal if you do the wrong thing or are at a low altitude when you get into it. When you get a helicopter slow at a high altitude, nearly to an “out of ground effect” hover, start a slight descent that takes you out of effective translational lift and try to stop it by adding power, the helicopter can start falling straight down in its own disturbed air. The natural reaction of the pilot is to add more power to break the fall, but that only increases the rate of descent. The more power you pull, the faster you fall. The only way out of settling with power is to get forward speed so that you get back in effective translational lift. Once you push the cyclic stick forward and get any air speed, the helicopter moves out of the disturbed air into clean air and the descent immediately becomes a climb.