Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (3 page)

2

CHASING BUZZARDS

FORT WOLTERS, TEXAS ■ FEBRUARY 1969

The OH-23 Raven was a three-man bubble helicopter designed by one of the pioneers of vertical flight, Stanley Hiller. The first ones came out in the early 1950’s and the final versions lasted long enough to see service as scouts in Vietnam. Even in 2013, a few OH-23’s soldier on as crop dusters or toys for people with the money to keep an old helicopter operational. The 23 was a typical bubble helicopter, i.e., slow, with a manual throttle that works opposite of a motorcycle (the grip was black rubber and read “Harley-Davidson”), and was a very rugged machine, as I discovered when I bounced one about 20 feet into the air after screwing up a simulated engine failure, with no damage to the machine.

S
eventeen flight hours into my aviation career, I couldn’t say I really had much of an understanding of the process of flying in general, and the process of flying helicopters in particular. All us warrant officer candidates (WOCs) struggling to get through Primary Flight training at Fort Wolters were in about the same position; that is, scared and confused, but never admitting anything, even to each other. To admit any fear meant running the risk of having the staff wash you out of flight school, or maybe having one of your classmates write you up in a peer review that would accomplish the same thing, whereupon the Army would hand you a rifle and send you wading into the Vietnamese rice paddies. This, of course, is exactly what they did do in 1968 when you washed out of flight school. You still owed Uncle Sam a year and a half—plenty of time for a Vietnam tour.

I had soloed in the OH-23D helicopter the week before. After six-and-a-half hours of dual flight, my instructor looked over at me, smiled, and said, “Take it around the pattern three times, then come back and pick me up.” As he opened the door to climb out of the little helicopter, he started laughing, laughing so loud that I could hear him over the engine noise. I watched him walk to the ready shack where we waited between flights without even looking back, still laughing.

My first solo flight was uneventful, despite the pounding of my heart. After the three wobbly landings and takeoffs, with shaky hovering in between, my instructor came back to the aircraft, no longer laughing but smiling broadly.

“Congratulations! Looks like you won’t get washed out after all, well, not yet anyway. Let’s take it home now, while we’re on a roll,” he said.

He let me hover back out to the runway and make the takeoff. I remembered where our home field was, more or less, and after more or less leveling off (plus or minus 100 feet or so, i.e., the height of a ten-story building) I turned the aircraft toward it. Feeling very pleased with myself, I actually felt like I was in control of the aircraft, for once. Five miles from the outlying field we had just left, the instructor said, “I’ve got it” and as we had been taught, I immediately let go of the controls.

Looking over at the instructor, I wondered what I had done wrong, since they did not normally take the flight controls without a reason. He was still smiling as he took the controls. With his left hand he pointed out to the front of the bubble.

“See that buzzard at one o’clock, just a little high,” he asked? “

“Yes, sir. I saw it and was going to avoid it,” I replied, thinking he thought I was going to get too close to the bird and have it hit the bubble of our aircraft.

“Watch this,” he said and turned directly for the bird.

The vulture saw us, or had been watching us already, and turned to escape from the larger “bird” attacking him. As the vulture turned, we turned with him. As he dove, we dove, always staying far enough away to ensure we did not hit him. For what seemed to be three or four minutes, we followed him through the sky, turning, twisting, climbing, diving, and then, laughing, my instructor turned the H-23 back toward the base, resumed level flight, and gave me back the controls.

It was the first time I had ever been in a maneuvering helicopter. We were not just taking off, climbing out and flying level around the traffic pattern—we were actually twisting and turning through the sky! With the assurance of a god-like flight instructor sitting next to me, I knew there was no danger to us and it was fun! After the grind of basic training, the terror of preflight training and the pressure to solo, it was the first time that “90 days between you and the sky” seemed real, the first feeling of freedom, of real flying, like the old war movies.

Now, another week and another five hours of flight time later, I was being entrusted with flying an aircraft the fifteen miles from the stage field back to Fort Wolters, all by myself. I was sure it would be no problem. I felt good, having had a good flight earlier in the day. So I pulled up on the collective, and not wobbling too much, took off to head for home. I leveled off at 500 feet, plus or minus only 50, instead of the 100 feet of last week; this time it was a five-story building instead of a ten-story. At about the same place as the week before, a vulture was circling.

“That was fun, chasing the buzzard last week,” I thought as I turned toward the bird. The only problem was that this buzzard was either the same one or one that had been chased once too often. Instead of turning way, the buzzard, or maybe it was a hawk, turned toward the helicopter, intending to fight.

For a moment I panicked. A good-sized bird, or even a small one for that matter, will do a lot of damage to an aircraft, if it hits the right parts, like the bubble and/or the pilot. To avoid the buzzard, I turned hard right, pulled a lot of power while rolling on as much throttle as I could. The bird passed beneath the H-23, clear and gone. My heart pounding, I rolled the aircraft level and started to lower the collective to descend to the mandated 500 feet. I was already passing through 800 feet, climbing rapidly, and knew I would get in trouble (thoughts of rice paddies passed through my mind) if I went higher. But as I tried to lower the collective pitch lever, I found it would not go down. The collective was stuck up and I was climbing faster than I ever had.

Climbing into the Texas sky, I was passing through 1,200 feet when the thought occurred to me that I had no idea how high this aircraft could go or what happened if you tried to go higher than that. Unable to think of anything else except getting the helicopter started on its way back down, I loosened my seat belt and half stood in the cockpit, all the while keeping my feet on the rudders. Holding the cyclic stick with my right hand, I put all my weight on the collective stick with my left and it came down. All the way down, leaving me almost floating in the air as the aircraft entered mild negative “G,” like when you almost leave the ground in your car taking a rise in the road too fast. I was now mostly a passenger, instead of the pilot. The aircraft wobbled around the sky, upright as it fell but not really under control.

As the slight negative G faded, I managed to regain control, more or less, and after stopping the descent, did the first thing all men do when they have done something stupid or clumsy or something they know they shouldn’t have done. I looked around to see if anyone had seen me. There were no other helicopters in sight, so no one had.

It took a few minutes for me to get my heart under control, get to more or less the right altitude, and to figure out exactly where I was, and to head back toward the base. The bird was nowhere to be seen. In the following 24 years I spent as an aviator, I never chased a bird again, although I did hit a duck at about 160 MPH once, but that’s another story.

3

ENGINE FAILURE

FORT CAMPBELL, KENTUCKY ■ NOVEMBER 1970

The OH-13E Sioux was a Korean War aircraft, the same one used for the opening sequence of the TV show M.A.S.H. The E models I flew were all built in 1951. They had wooden rotor blades that warped a little when the aircraft sat out in the damp, causing it to have a slight vibration until they straightened out after turning for a while. The OH-13E also came with a hand crank, just like a Ford Model-T, in case the battery was dead. It had only two seats, but with only 190 horsepower it couldn’t lift much more than two people anyway. As old, slow, and weak as the OH-13E was, I loved flying it, mainly because it was the first aircraft I could truly take out on my own.

T
he student pilot was a captain, a recent returnee from Vietnam, and a good stick (jargon for a smooth pilot). He was doing very well flying the old OH-I3E even though he was used to modern turbine powered helicopters and not old reciprocating engine-powered ones. The aircraft’s altitude had remained right where it was supposed to be, 1000 feet, since we had started down the flight corridor from the airfield out to the rear area of Fort Campbell. The captain’s control of the manual throttle was good too; RPM steady at 3I00 in cruise flight, just as required.

As normal, the heater in the OH-I3E was barely putting out any heat at all. Not surprising, since the heater, like that on Volkswagens of similar vintage, was just a shroud around the exhaust pipe of the engine. In the just-above freezing November air, both of us were bundled into winter-weight flight suits that resembled gray nylon children’s playsuits. Even though we both had on two pair of socks, our feet were still cold inside our black leather combat boots.

I was the instructor pilot and was more than slightly intimidated, as I always was then, by Vietnam vets, like the older man in the right seat. Even though I was the instructor, I was also a nearly brand new warrant officer 1 (also known as a “Wobbly One”) and not yet a Vietnam vet.

Instead of the usual direct ticket to in-country, my flight school class, for reasons unknown to us, was assigned to various forts around the states when we graduated from flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama—the first time that had happened in ten years. Assigned to the 3rd Army at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, I was so excited at the prospect of being a real aviator that I did not even take the full 30-day leave I had coming, but instead, bundled up my wife into our green ‘68 Impala Custom Coupe and proceeded to the base less than two weeks after flight school graduation. I was the first of the wave of new WO’s headed for Campbell. I walked in the door to the Standardization Office and the boss said, “Look’s like we will need some more instructors. Kid, take that H-13 and get 100 hours, then we’ll make you an instructor pilot (IP).” Thus, I was selected to become an instructor. I, the brand new WOI, straight from flight school at Fort Rucker, Alabama, was now to be an instructor pilot.

“Take that H-13, get 100 hours in it and we’ll give you a local instructor’s course,” the major in charge of the standardization section told me on my first day of real duty in the Army and the words rang in my ears. A new pilot’s dream, but I wondered when I would get the God-like confidence most instructors had.

The other two pilots assigned to standards were older Chief Warrant Officer 2’s (CW2), both of them between Vietnam tours and in no big hurry to fly an excessive number of hours in an 18-year old, wooden bladed, Korean War vintage, two-man bubble helicopter, and as such, were only too glad to let the new kid fly. And fly I did, as soon as my ten-hour transition course was finished, any mission, any day, every day, to build the 100 hours. I flew the MPs on tours of the back areas of the fort looking for poachers. I flew basic training company commanders on tours of their bivouac areas. I flew “flour bombing” missions, where my passenger would throw paper bags of flour out at marching trainees to simulate real bombs. My wife understood the inconvenient Sunday missions and short cross-countries to Bowling Green, Kentucky, and Nashville, Tennessee. In a month and a half I had over 100 hours of flight time in the Sioux and began the ten-flight-hour instructor course. I learned a lot in that course, for example, to be very, very careful what you say when you are flying.

In the OH-13E a maximum performance takeoff is not very maximum. The helicopter had a very small engine, so a vertical takeoff over a 50’ obstacle was difficult to impossible unless it was very cold, you had a very strong head wind, and/or had a very light load. The procedure consisted of picking up to a 3’ hover and hovering backwards in the landing zone as far as you could go without hitting anything. When you were ready to begin the takeoff, you rolled the throttle on as far as it would go for maximum power, while lifting the collective to keep your engine RPM at the takeoff speed of 3,200 RPM. You kept the nose of the helicopter level with the horizon. This nose attitude would give you around 20 knots forward airspeed, just enough to bring you into translational lift, that point in flight where smooth, undisturbed air comes down through the rotor system and reduces the amount of engine power required to fly. When you cleared the obstacle you reduced throttle slightly to prevent engine over speed as you lowered the collective to reduce power from maximum while lowering the helicopter’s nose to transition to forward flight.

If it appeared that you would not clear the 50’ obstacle, the procedure was to move the cyclic stick backwards and fly, slide really, back into the landing zone tail first. This was not something any of us ever wanted to do, even though we had done it back at Fort Wolters in primary training. If the tail slide was successfully accomplished, you would then lighten the aircraft by burning off fuel or sending your passenger on a hike to a bigger landing zone where you could pick him up and try again. Finally, if the landing zone was big enough, you could fly in tight circles close to the ground until you got enough speed to get through translational lift and climb out using a cyclic climb that traded airspeed for altitude, again something that few of us wanted to do.

On this syllabus flight, I was the “instructor” and was talking my “student” (a very experienced instructor pilot) through the maximum performance takeoff procedure as we sat in our turning helicopter on the north side of Fort Campbell’s airfield. When I had talked him through what we were going to do, he lifted the helicopter into the prescribed three-foot hover.

“OK, instruments are good. We are clear to go. Now, holding the nose level, smoothly roll on full throttle while increasing collective to keep the RPM under control.”

My student followed my words exactly and our takeoff was going perfectly. In seconds we were smoothly clear of our imaginary 50-foot obstacle and ready to transition to forward flight.

“Now, we are clearing our obstacle, so roll off the throttle … ”

That’s as far as I got because my “student” completely closed the throttle, leaving us at 50 feet and 20 knots with no engine power, firmly in the middle of the “dead man’s curve,” i.e. that point in the height-velocity diagram where your airspeed, plotted against your altitude, puts you completely out of the area of flight where a safe landing can be made without engine power. Lose power while you are in the dead man’s curve, and you will crash. Period. As he closed the throttle, I looked at him in complete amazement, my mouth wide open. He was looking back at me, cool, calm, and smiling.

The OH-13E’s wooden rotor blades did not have weighted tips, meaning that there was minimal inertia to keep them turning without power from the engine. No turning blades, no lift and you just fall. As the blades rapidly slowed, I grabbed the flight controls, trying to keep the fuselage level and stop the sideward drift we picked up instantaneously, while desperately rolling the throttle back on as we wobbled toward the ground. I didn’t quite get the aircraft back to full RPM before we hit the ground, shaky but level and with only one bounce. Mouth still open I looked at my “student,” completely speechless.

Still smiling and cool after our near crash, the real instructor said, “ Never, ever, say anything like that unless you really mean it. When you say “roll off the throttle,” a student will do just that, like I just did. And, when a student does something stupid, like I just did, you, Mr. Instructor Pilot, must be ready to recover, like you just did.”

Lesson learned in a way I would not forget, and I never had that particular problem again. No, there were many others waiting for me.

Now, a month after completing the instructor training course, I was out with my fourth student, the captain. my first had also been a more experienced pilot just back from Vietnam, who could obviously fly the helicopter with more skill than the brand new instructor pilot in the right seat. my confidence grew with the next two students, both new WO’s like me, straight from flight school and not yet into and back from the war. But now I had another old hand, a captain, and again felt more than slightly inadequate to train him. the thought went through my mind that he should have been training me instead of the other way around as we flew toward our training area.

The outbound route from the airfield at Fort Campbell to our gravel and dirt training airfield ran down a road through the middle of the base, over WWII wooden training barracks that now housed the basic trainees who were the only remaining soldiers at the normally crowded base while the 101st Airborne Division (Airmobile) was off in Southeast Asia. When the road left the main base proper and started through the woods that make up the Fort Campbell rear area and the majority of the reservation, it went down into a small valley. On both sides of the road at that point were large grassy fields, nicely open, smooth and flat.

I made it a habit to give my student the first simulated engine failure of each familiarization flight over the highway bridge between the fields. Simple, the student had only to turn right or left and he was set up perfectly for the autorotation from the standard 1000 feet out-bound altitude.

Simulated engine failures were a very important part of helicopter training in the old, reciprocating-engine aircraft; the reciprocating engines in 1950’s helicopters quit fairly often, at least compared with modern turbines. When the helicopter loses full engine power, the pilot has only seconds, as in maybe two or three seconds, to lower the collective pitch lever, the power control on helicopters, and enter autorotation. If he does not lower the collective in time, the rotors will slow to the point where a recovery cannot be made, the blades bend upwards, stall, and the aircraft literally falls from the sky.

The simplest way to think of the process is to understand that in normal, powered flight, the engine drives the rotors. When the pilot pulls up on the collective pitch lever, air is pulled down through the rotors and produces lift. When the engine stops, the power to turn the rotors, and to thereby produce lift, is gone. By entering autorotation the pilot trades altitude for lift, with the power coming from gravity. the pilot rapidly lowers the collective all the way down, and as the helicopter starts to descend, the air flow reverses, providing lift to keep the aircraft flying and under control. With the airflow now coming up through the rotors, the pilot is trading altitude for lift. the helicopter has entered autorotation.

All the pilot must do once autorotation is established is to get his airspeed right in order to glide the proper distance and, of course, find a place to land. Properly done, an autorotation is a steep, fast, but relatively normal landing. Done wrong, the result is a sure crash; hence, all helicopter pilots were taught engine failure procedures from nearly the first day of flight school. every time the student flew the helo over a spot where he could not make a safe autorotative landing, a large set of woods for example, the instructor would cut the throttle. After a few flights, all students flew over areas where autorotations were possible as much as they could, their helicopters flying zigzag through the sky, almost like they were dodging ground fire.

There was little conversation between us on the outbound trip. the captain had completed his work at the main airfield practice area—hovering, landing and lifting off, simple things—and was on his way to the first confined area landings (small fields, usually surrounded by trees, instead of wide open areas of airfields) of the ten flight hour transition syllabus. All his work had been well within standards and his control touch was smooth, so I felt no apprehension about his ability to handle a simple forced landing, the same kind all Army pilots had practiced a thousand times in flight school.

I lit a cigarette. trying to match the practiced skill of the instructors at Fort Wolters and Fort Rucker, who could induce a simulated engine without the student suspecting what was coming, I started to put my cigarette lighter back into my pocket, but instead quickly grabbed the throttle and turned it to idle. Whether or not he was fooled, the captain responded perfectly. I felt slightly light in my seat as the collective came down rapidly to enter the auto. As the captain adjusted the rudders to keep the aircraft in trim and turned right, lining up neatly for the level green field below, he kept the airspeed at exactly 70 knots, just as the book called for.

I relaxed again. the captain had done everything correctly. Since practice engine failures like this one were not continued all the way to a landing, as we passed through 500 feet I called for the captain to recover. As he rolled the throttle back on to get engine power restored, there was a slight cough from behind us, and then silence. In flight school, the instructors described the sound of a dead engine as the same as “a mouse pissing on cotton.” that was an inadequate description since the silence was closer to going completely deaf, at least to me it was.

After the slightest moment of hesitation, my flight school and instructor training took over. throwing the freshly lit cigarette to the captain I yelled what instructors always yell when the situation is getting beyond the other pilot’s control, “I’ve got it” and grabbed the flight controls.