Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (24 page)

We had a crashed Huey hanging below our Chinook that day, a routine mission to take the wreckage to a depot for repair or stripping. The damage to the Huey kept it from hanging straight below us docilely like they usually do. Instead, it had a tendency to start swinging slightly, not a problem really, at least at first. We climbed to N, HHH feet to get out of range of any ground fire and to enjoy the cool air away from the tropical heat. We were holding the usual QH knots airspeed as per company Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) when the Huey started to seriously swing, oscillating around to the point where it was becoming a threat to our Chinook. If it hit the bottom of our aircraft, it could possibly take us out of the sky.

To stop a load from swinging, the usual procedure is to slow down and make the load heavier by adding weight, i.e. add power to increase “G” on the load. The AC immediately started to slow down and add power. As we slowed, the swinging began to decrease when suddenly we were going straight down, aircraft level but falling so fast the vertical speed indicator was pegged on full down, meaning in less than one minute we would hit the jungle below.

“Pickle! Pickle!” the AC yelled over the intercom, meaning jettison the Huey. The Chinook has triple redundancy for getting rid of external loads: electrical, using the button on the bottom of the cyclic stick; mechanical, using a pedal between the rudder pedals on each side; and emergency, activating a red-covered switch that discharges an air bottle thereby blowing the hook to the open position. He was yelling for me to do it because, as per our SOP, we had turned off the electrical jettison system once we were safely in forward flight, to prevent an inadvertent release. Instead of using either the manual or emergency system, I was reaching for the electrical switch on the overhead panel when we looked across the cockpit at each other and simultaneously realized that we were in “settling with power.”

The AC pushed the nose of the Chinook forward and we instantaneously went from a N, HHH+ feet per minute descent to a L, HHH+ feet per minute climb. He reduced the power as our airspeed came up to QH knots. After a few seconds, the flight engineer called “Load’s steady.” About ten minutes later, we got our heart rates under control again. The Huey stayed where it was supposed to be without another swing for the rest of the flight. Give the crew due credit, none of them said a word about how close we had brought them to death—cool counts for them too.

Later, in CH-46s, I tried to induce “settling with power” so that the student pilots could see and recognize it, but the 46 just would not go into it. The closest I could come was a zero airspeed autorotation, but the rate of descent was nothing like power settling—way too slow. When I tried it in the Sea King, I found out that not only would the aircraft readily enter “settling with power” after it entered, it would not fall straight down but would begin to oscillate violently. As soon as it started to oscillate, I would reduce power and lower the nose to fly the Sea King out of it. No point in scaring yourself any more than absolutely necessary.

But today there would be no “settling with power.” Don’t think we could have made that cement block swing if we wanted to; it was just too heavy and had a nice small surface area. It was a lot like the 8,000-pound loads of 105mm ammo that we carried into Laos in February, 1971. One major difference that I would not demonstrate to my student today was how we did our final approach and landed the load in 1971. today it would just be a normal approach, coming to a high hover with the load 20 feet off the ground before moving it forward into position and setting it down. In 1971, we Chinook pilots used a procedure I’ve never seen before or since.

When the enemy has small arms or light machine guns around the landing zone where you are taking your external load, you want to keep your helicopter right over the secure zone and out of their range as much as possible. In a 46, you can do this flying directly over the LZ at 1,500 feet or more, then putting the helicopter into a tight spiral down, rolling into a 45–60 degree angle of bank, while dropping the power all the way down to enter autorotation as you auger down. this keeps your aircraft right over the LZ and out of enemy range, at least a little.

That was the theory anyway…

At some point, you roll your 46 wings level and transition back to a normal approach. You can’t do this in a Chinook because the aircraft is limited to 30 degrees of bank, making your turns really big, thus very much limiting your ability to stay over the landing zone and out of enemy range.

In Laos, we would fly our Chinooks directly into the wind, toward the landing zone at 3,000 feet or more, and above the ground to stay out of AK-47 and 12. 7mm machine gun range. We would slow our airspeed as we got close, until at last, we were just about stopped. Power settling was not an issue because we kept the aircraft pointed into the wind. Instead of adding power to maintain altitude, when we could see the landing point between the rudder pedals, we would put the thrust all the way down to enter autorotation. With zero forward airspeed, the Chinook would be moving backwards through the air at whatever speed the wind was blowing. Since we did not have a radar altimeter at what we estimated to be MHH feet above the ground, we would lower the nose to regain airspeed and at around JHH feet we would pull back stick to flare the aircraft while adding power to break our rate of descent and ideally, transition to a normal approach. If you worked it just right, you could drop the load where they wanted it and be back in a very rapid climb within seconds.

But we wouldn’t do that today. We would just fly the pattern and land the load. Lift the load to about 20 feet off the ground, add power, lower the nose, climb to 300 feet, fly the pattern at 300 feet, call abeam, roll into the turn to final, bring the aircraft to a hover with the load 20 feet off the ground, and finally drop it where the LZ control team wanted it. After that, we would hover the helicopter backwards until we could see the load again and then repeat the process. We would do that for about an hour so that the student could get as many practice external loads as possible before we had to return to the airfield and real life.

After I dropped the load and moved the aircraft backwards into position, I gave the flight controls to the student. He held a nice, steady hover and at the crew chief’s direction, smoothly moved forward over the load.

“Forward 10, over the load, down 10, 5 hold, steady, steady, load hooked, hookup man clear. Come straight up. tension coming on the load. Sling’s tight, up, up, load’s off. Up 20, 10, steady. All ready aft, clear to go,” the crew chief called. It was as smooth a pickup as I’ve seen and I relaxed.

The student smoothly added power and lowered the nose. But then he didn’t add enough power and he lowered the nose too far and in a second the concrete block load hit the ground and dug in, rotating the helicopter at the top of the sling directly toward the ground 40 feet away, nose first. We would hit the ground in less than five seconds; first would be the forward rotor blades and as they came off, the cockpit. We might or might not burn. The crashworthy fuel system worked sometimes and sometimes it did not. But we didn’t crash.

When I am not at the flight controls, I always rest my right hand on my right leg, near the cyclic stick. When I saw the nose start to rotate forward my hand moved, without conscious thought, to the cyclic and the hook release button. Without a word, I pushed the button, the hook opened, the load fell away and the aircraft began to move forward, but no longer nose first toward the ground. my right hand closed around cyclic and my left, the collective as I said, “I’ve got it!” The student immediately released the controls and I stopped the helicopter in a stable hover. moving over to a clear spot, I asked the crew chief, “Clear below?” We were and I sat the helicopter down.

My crew chief was an old hand and had realized, as I did, what was happening as it happened and was moving for his release. He would have released the load if I had not. He also knew to get back out of the way because when you release a load under tension, the cargo hook will swing up and can easily hit an unwary crewman directly in the face.

The student was not even slightly upset. Ah, the joy of ignorance when you do not know how close a call you just had. I calmly went through what just happened with him and explained why it happened. He nodded and said he understood. I gave the flight controls back to him and told him to try it again. He lifted smoothly into a 20-foot hover and at the crew chief’s direction again, moved the aircraft backwards until the load was visible over the dash. The crew chief talked us into position over the load. The student had no problem getting the 46 directly over the load, lowering the aircraft down until the hookup man could get the donut on the hook.

He lifted us up until the load was 20 feet off the ground, and transitioned us to forward flight absolutely perfectly. There was no hint of his first time mistake. He did five more lifts, each time with a heavier load, and each, absolutely perfect from hookup to drop back in the LZ. Training hop complete, we flew back to New River with a GCA to a final landing, hit the fuel pits to top off the tanks and taxied back to the ramp. I gave him all “above average” marks for the flight on the write-up since he did all lifts as close to perfect as pilots get after almost killing us on the first try. Like I said in the beginning, he was a natural pilot.

Luck and superstition…

21

THE RITUAL

MARINE CORPS AIR STATION, NEW RIVER,
NORTH CAROLINA ■ NOVEMBER 1985

Most things change over a flying career. Flying uniforms change: I started flying in cotton fatigues, then two-piece nomex flight suits, and then one-piece nomex coveralls. Aircraft change: when you are in the Marine Corps, you start Navy helicopter training in the TH-57T and then move up to UH-IE/L model Hueys; then the Huey is gone and you are in the Fleet Marine Corps flying a CH-46F. Even military services change: first I flew in the Army and then the National Guard and then the Marine Corps. Clothes change, aircraft change, even services change for some of us, but what never changes is the ritual that leads to a flight. If anything, the ritual becomes stronger and more ingrained with time.

A
s nearly always, my eyes came open about five minutes before the clock went off. Somewhere along the line, my internal clock took over from the teenage desire to sleep longer, and my eyes open before they have to. In the darkness, as my eyes opened, the same two feelings were always there. First, I had to piss and second, I needed some nicotine. Shutting off the alarm before it had a chance to ring, I climbed from bed, carefully trying not to wake my wife and headed for the bathroom. From there I went to the kitchen, turned on the light and plugged in the coffee peculator I had prepared the night before. Then, as it began its work, I went back to the living room and lit my pipe for the first time of the day.

It takes a long time to get a military flight into the air properly. The ground crews and the enlisted aircrew checked everything on the aircraft the night before but there are many more checks to do in the morning before the pilots arrive. The pilots themselves must sit through a briefing, then brief themselves, view the aircraft paperwork, preflight, and start it up. For the pilots, it takes an hour and a half, so you must be there at least 15 minutes before the brief to get ready for it. Typically, the process from wakeup to takeoff took me two and a half hours, but I always gave myself a little extra time.

I always plan on getting up at least 15 minutes before I have to so that I can have the coffee and the smoke before I have to move into more complicated activities. By the time the bowl of tobacco was gone, the coffee was ready, so I went to the kitchen and poured the first of many cups of coffee I would drink that day. After the coffee, I shaved, brushed my teeth, and showered before dressing in a semi-clean set of utilities and combat boots. Semi-clean because they had been worn once but had not wrinkled to the point that a new set was required. I brought a cup of coffee into the bedroom and set it next to my sleeping wife while I gave her a small kiss before leaving for work. As I left the bedroom, I heard a sleepy, “be careful” from behind me. my second cup of coffee went with me in the car in a red glass cup, like those my parents used to use.

Driving down the stretch of Highway 17 in the dark toward the Air Station, I faced a steady stream of cars going the other direction, even though it was only 0500 hours. The men in the cars were Marines on their way to the rifle range: go about two miles past my house and take a left turn at the blinking light by Dixon school, and then go another three miles before you turn off to the left. The rifle range always started at dawn, no matter the time of year. That meant the shooters could finish up early enough to get back to the base and clean their weapons by early afternoon, so the staff could do all the other things that go with being a Marine, like Pt and paperwork. Six, sometimes seven days a week, you could hear the gun fire in the distance from my front yard. Sometimes further away, you could hear machine guns too, maybe even mortars over on Camp Lejeune.

Drinking coffee and listening to AM country music, I drove more or less without thought, until I turned the headlights off and parking lights on to keep from blinding the sentry, before going through the gate to the Air Station. The sentry waved me through without a glance, even though it was too early for the “proceed” sign to be out and all the cars that made up the morning rush hour to pass through unimpeded.

There were lots of parking places in the narrow lot in front of my squadron’s hanger as I arrived. Later there would be none and some of the squadron would have to park illegally in the commissary parking lot and hope they would not get a ticket. But at 0520 hours no one was there except those who had to get the aircraft ready or fly in the early launch.

The cars of the young enlisted men, those with the red base stickers, were generally older models, covered with the emblems of various rock groups and semi-obscene bumper stickers—”All I want is a nice sweet girl who doesn’t mind cleaning vomit off the dash.” The staff NCOs tended toward bigger, American cars, while the unmarried junior officers had the sporty, import models. The older officers drove the typical second cars, usually economy models, with a year or two left in them. Given that the older officers were usually in their thirties, their other vehicle, the newer one, was likely to be a van, used to carry groceries and to haul the kids to soccer matches and little league.

Leaving the empty coffee cup in the car, I walked toward the gray steel door with my squadron’s patch painted on it that led to the second deck and the squadron ready room. It seemed like I had taken this walk a million times, past the sign with the CO, XO, and sergeant major’s names on it, below the plywood sign in the shape of the squadron patch. The dingy ladderwell to the second deck had one bulb out and needed sweeping but I was not the buildings and grounds officer or the XO, so I didn’t even really think about reporting it to anyone. The once painted but now nearly bare metal rail left rust on my hand as I climbed the stairs.

Turning left at the top, down the passageway and through the empty ready room and into the locker room, I saw and heard no one else. The operations duty officer (ODO) board, a plastic sheet divided into rows and columns with names, times, and aircraft numbers, was filled out, so at least the ODO was here, just not at the duty desk. A noise from the toilet confirmed his location.

As I turned on the locker room light, a figure in the bottom rack of the bunk bed by the door stirred. The squadron duty officer, the SDO, a new lieutenant who had just joined the squadron, eyed me, the captain, sleepily. The location of the duty rack, a pair of stacked gray-steel bunk beds, one for the SDO and one for his enlisted clerk, between the head and ready room, made it nearly impossible for anyone to sleep there after Flight Operations started for the day.

“Morning, Sir,” said a voice from under the scratchy green wool issue blanket.

“Quiet night, Lieutenant?” I asked.

“Ab-so-fucking-lootly dead, Sir.”

Not really feeling like further conversation, I worked the combination lock and opened my locker. I took out a gray-green flight suit on a wire hanger. A quick sniff convinced me it was time to change to a fresh one, so placing the hanger on one of the top vents of the locker door, I began to strip the old one. The Velcro holding the squadron patch on the left breast made a ripping sound as I pulled it off. Next came the name tag from above the left breast pocket and then the pen and grease pencil from the left shoulder pocket. From the knife pocket, inside the left thigh of the flight suit, I pulled out the white parachute cord that attached a Swiss Army knife to the grommet at the top of the pocket. After un-tying the string, I pulled the knife out and laid it on the shelf with the patches. From the left calf pocket of the flight suit, I pulled out the pocket checklist that all pilots carried. taking the clean flight suit from the locker door, I placed all the items in their proper places and re-hung it on the locker door.

Lifting my old green nylon helmet bag from the bottom of the locker, I sat it on the bench that ran the length of the locker room. I could have requested a new helmet bag but this one had been with me for many, many flights starting back in Navy flight school, so why change? Reaching into the dark locker, I found my steel-toed black flight boots and put them next to the helmet bag. Sitting down on the narrow bench that ran the length of the locker room, I unlaced my combat boots and tossed them into the locker with the dirty flight suit, producing a minor crash somewhat muffled by the dirty flight suit. Hanging my utilities on a spare hanger, I put the fresh flight suit on, reached into the top shelf of the locker for the shaving kit full of shoeshine things, and sat back down.

After polishing the flight boots, I laced them over the green British aircrew socks left over from my exchange tour—they stayed up better on my skinny legs—and stood up. I reached back into the locker and removed the survival vest from the heavy steel hanger from the flight equipment section. Slinging the vest over my shoulder, I took the old leather flight jacket off its hanger, picked up my helmet bag, and went out into the ready room to prepare for the brief and the day’s mission.

Ignoring the sleepy SDO as I went by, I sat down in the front row of seats. I put my vest onto an empty chair in the second row. Setting the helmet bag on the floor next to my chair, I took out my battered black aluminum kneeboard and tore off the top sheet of paper so I would have a clean space to work on. Taking the black ink issue SkillCraft pen, made by the blind, from its storage tube on the right of the knee board, I clicked it open and began marking off spaces on the blank sheet of paper.

In the upper left hand corner of the paper, I drew a rectangular box. Below that, I drew several lines. One I labeled “Squadron Common,” the next three I left blank. After labeling the appropriate spaces, I copied the numbers for the UHF and Fm radio frequencies, the weather, including the barometric pressure and temperature, and the wind direction here at the airfield off the ODO board.

At 0528, the ODO came in and moved a stack of papers from the duty desk to the lectern.

“Seen my copilot?,” I asked from my front row seat.

“Yes, Sir.,” the ODO replied. “He went down to his car to get something; said he would be back in a couple of minutes.”

As the last words were out of his mouth, another lieutenant, my copilot, walked through the ready room door from the hallway and took a seat next to me. He had his kneeboard in his hand with a folded piece of paper on it. It was 0533 hours.

“Any particular reason you’re late for the brief?” I asked, trying to sound as bored as possible.

The lieutenant flushed, “Sorry, Sir, I just wanted to get my thermos out of the car, I didn’t realize that it was so late.”

I just looked at him and said nothing. After a moment I looked up at the ODO and said, “Shall we get started?”

The ODO had been silent until now. Usually I was the first one with a joke and I love war stories more than anything, but the ODO had flown with me enough to know that I had two personalities, one for flying and one for the rest of the time. The “flying me” still had the sense of humor but tolerated no lack of professionalism, especially in the brief. The mental door marked “flying” had closed and there was room for nothing else.

“Time hack (a military term for marking the exact time) in 30 seconds. Time at the mark will be 0535 hours,” the ODO said.

“Hack in 5 seconds.”

“Hack. Time is 0535 hours. All crews scheduled for the 0700 launch are present (a rather useless comment since the lieutenant and I made up the entire early launch, but he had to say it). Weather is 1500 scattered, viz 6 miles in haze; temperature is 16 degrees C; sunrise at 0658; PA and DA (PA is pressure altitude and DA is density altitude. They are used to calculate aircraft performance) are as posted; wind is 040 at 7 knots; forecast is for VFR all day. missions are as assigned on the flight schedule. You are scheduled for the frag (fragment of a full mission order, contains only the portions of the order necessary to define a particular mission) supporting 2/8. You’ve got the frag sheet, Sir. Aircraft assignments will be posted when Maintenance calls them up. Hot ranges are posted on the board. No quiet hours today at New River or Cherry Point. The maintenance officer says all chock times (the time when the aircraft must be parked back on the ramp) are hard. He also said, “If you are late I will have your ass.” Check in on Squadron common fox mike in and out bound. Any questions, sir?”

The ODO’s words sounded like he was reading a script, which he in fact was. The words were spelled out clearly in the notebook he had open in front of him on the lectern. Under the tattered, plastic cover, the sheets themselves were wrinkled and smeared with illegible words scribbled next to and sometimes over the text. The ODO knew that I knew the words by heart and would remind him if he forgot something, even though all three of us could probably say them without even looking at the notebook. It is a religious exercise in all senses.

Turning from the ODO, I reached into my lower right flight suit ankle pocket and pulled out my copy of the checklist. With the words, “Our aircraft will be as assigned by maintenance,” the next part of the ritual, the briefing, began.

Five hours later and sitting in the chocks, our CH-46E went quiet as the auxiliary power unit (APU) died. It had been a long morning, and the quiet felt nice after the noise of the engines and transmissions and radios. I took my helmet off, looked over at the lieutenant on my right and said, “Cheated death again, didn’t we? Luck and superstition, that’s all it is.” After a quick post-flight inspection, we left the aircraft and walked across the ramp back to the ready room and the rest of our day.

We had exited the room marked “flying” and returned to normal life with all the rooms we go through every day.