Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (6 page)

The big helicopter comes off the ground smoothly, front wheels first as the first rim of the sun becomes visible. At 20 feet you hold the aircraft steady in a hover while last minute checks of all the systems are made—“All set in the back”—“gauges look good”—and then you are free to go.

As you pull up on the thrust lever to add more power and lower the nose, and as you begin the first climb out of the day, you feel so strong, like your machine can lift the world and take it high into the sky. You are young and strong and nothing can ever change that for you—Ever. You can fly.

6

LUCK AND SUPERSTITION

DA NANG, VIETNAM ■ JANUARY 1971

I have no idea if pilots are more or less superstitious than people in other professions. Some have their “lucky” objects, some must do an obsessive/compulsive certain thing every time before they fly, while still others show no superstition at all. During Vietnam, mine became “petting” my aircraft, a soft pat on its nose or a rub on the skin by the door, as I boarded. It was a promise to the machine that I would take care of it and in return it promised to bring me back. I don’t think I had or needed any superstitions until I flew with the oldest pilot I have known before or since, but I did afterwards on the grounds that if it worked that long for him, it would work for me.

S
ometimes when flying missions in northern I Corps, we would see a single gray and black Huey, usually high above us and always alone. Sometimes it would be headed off toward the mountains that marked the border of Laos. Other times, we would see it sitting on the ground, just sitting by itself, in the middle of nowhere. Occasionally, we would see a man in a white short-sleeve shirt leaning against the side of the aircraft as it sat outside a small village. We always looked upon this as something of a wonder in our world of green uniforms and green helicopters above the green forest.

To those of us in the 101st Airborne, it always seemed an insane thing to do, to fly a gray and black helicopter without door guns by yourself and to wear a white shirt and tie, to put yourself outside the protective wall of the military and fly alone into unknown places. Of course, the Air America pilots that flew the gray and black Huey’s probably felt the same way about us, flying above the green for paltry military pay into hot landing zones and dusty mountaintops, day after day. And, of course before they were Air America pilots, they were us, learning their trade in the same helicopters we flew before leaving the green nomex for a shirt and tie.

Air America also flew many other types of aircraft, but we seldom saw them. Once, while waiting out some bad weather at the small, crumbling airstrip in the old imperial capitol, Hue City, I watched an Air America Helio Courier (a very short landing Swiss-built aircraft) drop from the clouds, roll to a stop in what seemed like its own length, off load a passenger, and after taking off in less than 100 feet, climb back into the sky in about two minutes flat. It disappeared into the clouds nearly as soon as it broke the ground. I had no idea how the pilot even found that airfield through the clouds, let alone land his fixed-wing in the same space a helicopter would have taken. Another time, it seemed I was flying through a cloud of what looked like snow, but then realized it was actually white paper, and looking up, I saw an old C-47 dropping Chu Hoi (“I surrender”) leaflets on the I Corps forest below us.

Strange aircraft, operating alone, were just part of the background of the war. All in all, Vietnam was a strange war—at least compared to what I had read about WWII—but a war that offered unusual opportunities to the participants. Opportunities like the two-week leave to anywhere in the world you wanted to take it, introduced in late 1970.

The two-week leave program was designed to keep morale up, always a good thing. Anyone could take two weeks of leave, right in the middle of the war and go anywhere they liked, albeit at your own expense, unlike Rest and Recuperation leave (R&R) when Uncle Sam pays for your flight. Patriotic airlines immediately introduced cheap fares from Vietnam back to the United States. Wishing for a nice break from the war, I immediately looked for the best deal and found it in a North West Orient ad.

For $350 all-in-all-done, I could fly commercial air from Da Nang, South Vietnam, to Nashville, Tennessee and back, and have nine days with my wife and son in the middle. Plus, because of their flight scheduling, I would have one night on the airline in Hong Kong between flights, not a bad deal anytime but especially nice in war time. A few phone calls later, I found out that I would have to buy my ticket in person at the Air Vietnam Airlines counter in Da Nang, about 60 miles and one small mountain pass to the south of Phu Bai.

Normally, getting to Da Nang from Phu Bai was as easy as finding another pilot who had a day off and wanted to do some shopping at the big Post exchange (PX) there. Then you went to Playtex Ops and signed out a Chinook for the day and went, taking a jeep with you in the back for transportation when you got there. The advantages of a big aircraft … but this time it was not so easy.

There were four different models of Chinook in Vietnam, the “A”, “B”, “Baby C,” and “Super C.” The A and B were older model aircraft with two fuel tanks and much less range than either of the two C models we flew with their six fuel tanks. Playtex had both Baby C’s and Super C’s, the difference being the Super C engines produced far more power than the ones in the Baby C. Everything has a price, and the price was that the engines on the Baby were good for 1,200 hours between changes, while because of the higher stress on them, the engines on the Super were only good for 300 hours.

The stress turned out much worse than the Army thought. The engines on the Super C weren’t making it to 300 hours; instead they were blowing up before it was time to change them. So, all Super C’s were grounded until the engines could be replaced with the weaker, but more reliable engines on Baby C’s. Unfortunately, Playtex had ten Super C’s out of a total of sixteen aircraft, leaving only six of the Baby C’s for missions until the engines on the Supers could be changed, bringing them back to Baby C’s. Optional flying was temporarily ended.

The second choice for getting to Da Nang was the Bus Run. As the name implied, Chinooks from one of the three companies in the 159th Assault Support Battalion flew a daily mission that was exactly like a city bus route. Ten hours long, the Bus Run went from Landing Zone (LZ) to LZ all over I Corps, including Da Nang, picking up and dropping passengers at set stops along the way. But the engine problem stopped the Bus Run, too.

Other than trying to hitch a ride on a truck, a very long and dangerous trip, the only option left was to go over to the base ops room at Phu Bai airfield and wait for someone to pass through on their way down to Da Nang. Having flown over 100 hours in last 30 days, company Ops gave me the day off and I bummed a ride in the company jeep for the mile over to the Phu Bai airfield.

The Base Ops Department was doing the usual paperwork when I came into their small office. When I finally got their attention, they told me to talk to the pilot of an Air America light twin-engine, fixed-wing parked on the ramp out in front of the building. I thanked them and walked through the front door, out onto the concrete ramp.

I could see a pilot in a white shirt studying a map in the cockpit. I walked to the right side and yelled into the open door, “You going to Da Nang.”

As the pilot turned toward me, I was surprised to see the oldest man I had ever seen at the controls of an aircraft sitting there. He must have been 70—a 70-year-old active pilot.

With a smile on his very lined face he said, “Sure am. You want a ride?”

When I replied yes, he motioned for me to climb in. I strapped myself into the right seat as he watched, smiling all the time.

Looking at the Playtex patch on my flight suit pocket, he asked, “enjoy flying Chinooks?”

“Yes, sir. Great aircraft. they’re a lot of fun,” I replied.

He smiled at that. “We’ll get going in a minute,” he said, turning back to his chart.

In 1971, at Playtex and all the other aviation companies, the average age of the pilots was around 21, maybe 23 tops. The old-timers, for example our major commanding officer (CO), were probably 35. In the states, I had seen colonels and some ancient, passed-over-for-promotion majors who were in their 40’s, but this man looked at least 70. A 70-year-old pilot. In his black pants and short-sleeved white shirt he looked even stranger, since I was familiar with green flight suits and rolled down sleeves and pistols worn in cowboy holsters, just like the uniform I had on. No pistol, no flight suit, just a short-sleeved white shirt and black trousers on a 70-year-old pilot….

Handing me a headset instead of a flight helmet, he put down the chart and began to start the airplane. Unlike the military procedures where one pilot calls out the steps from a checklist, he just started moving the switches at a rapid pace without referring to anything.

He talked as he started the aircraft, “I used to fly helicopters, but they’re just too noisy for me now. I liked the CH-21 though. You ever fly a CH-21? Nah, you’re too young for CH-21’s. Maybe a CH-34? Nah, you’re too young for them, too. Probably flew OH-23’s at Wolters, I’ll bet, you being tall and all,” he said, as the left, then right engines started. Obviously he had been an Army pilot in another life, another life a long time ago.

Reaching across in front of me he got the door to the airplane and pulled it closed. We put on our headsets as he pointed at a thumb switch on the control wheel that operated the intercom.

“We’ll be on our way in a minute or two. Here, you can navigate,” he said with a laugh, throwing me the rumpled chart he had been studying.

He laughed because no navigation was required between Phu Bai and Da Nang today. From the ramp where we were parked, we could see the mountains that ran down to the sea to the southeast. Mountains on your right and the water on your left and you would find Da Nang just on the other side of the first ridgeline you came to as you flew south. Just don’t take the easy path through the gap in the hills. It’s called the Hai Van Pass, and is littered with the wreckage of four or five aircraft that found out the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) likes to set up machine guns there every now and then to catch pilots sneaking through the pass under the clouds, instead of going out to sea between the shore and the island a mile out. Watch for them coming and then just hold the trigger down as they go by, easy…

He was already taxiing when he called tower for clearance and just glanced down the runway before pulling out. The throttles were already coming on as we left the taxiway, and in a short distance we were in the air and climbing out toward the mountains over a junkyard full of wrecked aircraft just off the end of the runway and the perimeter wire and bunkers. Never having had much to do with fixed-wing aircraft, I was somewhat surprised that he handled all the controls as easily as I did a helicopter. It would be logical that he did, but flying fixed-wing aircraft was not a natural act to me.

Reaching 5,000 feet, he turned the aircraft south. How different the ground looked from the cockpit of a fixed wing. No chin bubble to look through, wings in the way when you looked off to the side. No door gunners in the rear and no rotor vibrations, it felt unnatural. Instead of heading out to sea to fly between the islands and the mountains as we always did, he just climbed a little higher and went over the Hai Van well above machine-gun range.

On the 20-minute flight he never stopped talking. He talked of Beavers and Otters and Bird Dogs and other old fixed-wing aircraft that were disappearing day by day. Canadian built, Beavers and their bigger brothers, Otters, were single-engine tail-draggers meant for hard service in the bush of Canada and Alaska and other wild places. They carried two pilots and cargo/passengers. The Bird Dog was a Cessna, Kansas-built and tough in its own right. It was an observation aircraft with a pilot and observer flying seated in tandem for controlling artillery. He told of putting the aircraft into a tight turn over people on the ground and lowering down a bucket on a rope with a message in it. He talked of dirt strips and bad weather in Germany and all the other things pilots talk to other pilots about—hot landing zones, strips too short or too narrow and snow and ice on the runway and cheap copilots who wouldn’t buy you a drink. He was still talking as we taxied up to base operations at the Air Force Base (AFB) in Da Nang.

As the engines went quiet, I reached up to take off my headset. One last transmission came through before I took it off—he looked over at me with a huge grin and said, “Well, son, looks like we cheated death again, didn’t we? Luck and superstition, that’s all it is.”

As I walked away from the aircraft where he was still shutting things down, it struck me that he was right. When you break the ground and go flying in war zones, you really are risking death every time. And while you try to keep the odds on your side by following what you have been taught, by being orthodox and obeying the holy rules of flying, in the end, it is only luck and superstition that keep you alive.

I petted my aircraft as I boarded, and said those words after the rotors stopped on every flight for the rest of my career, “Cheated death again. Luck and superstition, that’s all it is.”

7

SURVIVAL INSTRUMENTS

I CORPS, VIETNAM ■ FEBRUARY 1971

During the height of the war in Vietnam, the Army could not afford the extra time to train pilots to fly only on the flight instruments to the level that the Air Force and Navy and Marines did. The Army needed bodies to fill the seats of the thousands of helicopters throughout the country. In the other services, newly minted aviators had a “standard” instrument ticket, meaning that they could fly during instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) under instrument flight rules (IFR) anywhere in the world, a necessary thing for pilots flying off ships and airfields at night and under all weather conditions. Army helicopter pilots, on the other hand, had a “tactical” instrument ticket, meaning that they could not fly IFR anywhere except in a war zone. Most of the time, this worked well because nearly all missions were conducted in daylight and under visual meteorological conditions (VMC). But sometimes…

T
he missions didn’t stop when the monsoon clouds and rain brought the weather down to near zip, because the war did not stop. the missions had to be done, they just took longer since the aircraft had to hover along, at times just above the trees, to deliver their external loads of food, ammunition, and even water in the midst of low clouds, rain, and fog. Instead of flying high above the reach of small arms, we flew low, down among the trees where the NVA might hear us or even see us but where we were usually long gone before they could react.

No one ever told us that there was such a thing as “mission categories,” i.e., routine, urgent, and mandatory, and that you could refuse missions. There were just missions and you had to try them, no matter the weather, enemy situation, or anything else. You had to try because the grunts and the gunners knew you would come and so you always did, hovering along in the rain and fog if you had to. Sometimes you might not make it, but you had to try.

This morning over the green coastal low lands, the clouds had lifted into a high overcast. It felt odd to be so high after weeks of monsoon rain, flying to the PZ instead of more or less hovering slowly forward over the trees. In the right seat of the CH-47C Chinook, the 21-year-old WO1 copilot that was me shivered slightly from the cool, damp air that came in around the sliding window on my side. It was supposed to be hot in Vietnam, but with November monsoon rain at 800 feet, it was probably in the 50’s and I had not brought my flight jacket.

To the north, ahead of us, was the base at Quang Tri and PZ that held the loads for this mission. If the visibility had been better, you could have seen up into North from here: scary when you first see it, but like most things, once you got past the novelty of looking into your enemy’s homeland, it was just normal, a fact that just was, not something you needed to talk about. The South China Sea out to the right was invisible in the mist.

The AC in the left seat, a CW2, called the PZ Control to let them know we were on our way in and got a “Line 1, mission 293” in response. The AC checked the mission sheet the duty clerk had given him before he left and said, “Shit.”

“What is the load?” I asked, curious about his comment since copilots did not get to see the mission sheet.

“It’s a generator. Goddamn thing weighs 6,500, maybe 7,000 pounds.”

“So what’s the problem?” I asked. “We can handle that no sweat.” Generators are nice loads, heavy without too much surface area to make them swing.

The AC looked over at me and said, “It’s not how much the damn thing weighs. It’s where it is going—check the LZ” and handed me the clipboard.

“Shit,” was all I could say after looking at the board.

The generator was going to a mountain top firebase right up on the demilitarized zone (DMZ.). The firebase was under easy observation from the jungle around the river that ran through the middle of the DMZ and therefore, it was easy to direct mortar fire onto the top of the hill. The North Vietnamese Army (NVA) gunners would wait to drop the mortar rounds down the tube until the aircraft was on short final (just about to touch down for landing), the most critical stage of flight for the helicopter. The pilots, concentrating on getting heavy loads to an exact spot, were always surprised when the booms that marked the explosions from the mortars came faintly through the aircraft noise, even though when you worked this base you halfway knew they were coming.

But today with the bad visibility, they would not see us before we were in and out. They might hear us, but timing the mortars was that much harder with only sound to work with.

That was the theory anyway …

“Kilo Alpha 1, Bravo Hotel 12, inbound on mission 1134, line 1,” the AC called over the fox mike so that LZ control team would know which load to have ready for us.

The hookup man was ready as the Chinook began its final approach to the pick up pad at Dong Ha, just north of Quang Tri. When the load came in sight, we could see that the sling was fouled, caught under the load, so that he had to lay on his back on top the load, but he had the donut (the reinforced nylon ring that joins the legs of the sling together) up as high as he could get it and was ready as our Chinook moved forward over him. The steel hook and belly of the aircraft would be inches above him during the hookup. One twitch by the pilot or any malfunction of the aircraft during the hookup would crush him between the load and the belly of the aircraft instantly.

To make sure we understood the danger of externals, we had to stand on top of loads and hook them up back at Fort Rucker while we were learning to fly Chinooks. To doubly reinforce the danger, after hookup, the student pilot at the controls would bring the helicopter even lower so that the student pilot doing the hookup could climb up from the top of the load and then climb through the hellhole into the aircraft’s cabin.

“Load coming under. Forward 30,” meaning bring the helicopter forward 30 feet, the Chief said over the intercom from the back of the aircraft. Lying on his belly on a stretcher looking down through the hellhole, the chief could see the load as the aircraft moved forward. The hellhole is the square or rectangular hatch-covered hole in the center of the helicopter’s cabin floor, that, when opened, allows the crew to see the cargo hook and the external load, as well as the ground below the aircraft.

“Forward 20, down 10.” The numbers were approximations but were good enough to allow the pilot an idea of how high he was above the load.

“Forward 10, down 5.”

“Hold down, forward 5. Steady”

“Load hooked. Up slow. Steady. Tension coming on the sling. Up slow, hookup man clear, tension.”

As the weight of the load was taken by the aircraft, I could feel the aircraft stop in its climb. I slowly applied more power by moving the thrust lever upward.

“Load’s off. Up 10,” the Chief called.

“Lots of power, gauges look good, clear to go,” called the AC from the left seat.

“Loads clear,” called the Chief.

Increasing power a little more, I thought “light thoughts” to make the load easier to carry, and applied forward stick. The Chinook began to move forward. Passing around 20 knots forward speed, the big helicopter shuddered as translational lift was achieved and we climbed above the perimeter barbed wire. The aircraft accelerated and climbed slowly into the mist as we moved off north toward the firebase on the DMZ.

Normally we would climb to at least 1500 feet above the ground so that we would be above the range of small arms fire, but today, the best we could do was about 800 feet. Above that we began to go into the clouds. Since there was no instrument approach to the firebase and further, neither of us was exactly what you would call “well trained” in instrument flight, I leveled the aircraft off below the clouds and hoped that there was no one with a rifle or machine gun waiting along our flight path. The load was riding well; it was not swinging back and forth since it was heavy and dense. The 6,000-pound generator had a small surface area for its weight and stayed in place below us as we flew toward the firebase.

At three miles from where the firebase should be, the mountain it sat on came into view. That is, the rising terrain that marked the base of the mountain was visible. Starting about half way up, clouds ran into the jungle that covered the sides.

Without comment, I began a right hand turn to take the generator back to the PZ. If the clouds were covering the firebase, we obviously could not see to deliver it.

“Turn back toward the hill,” the AC said over the intercom.

Rolling wings level, I looked over at the AC in the left seat. Then, seeing no reaction from him, after a moment I reversed course back toward the cloud-covered firebase.

“We can’t get in there,” I said, stating what I thought was readily apparent, given that the base was invisible in the clouds.

“Sure we can. All we have to do is shoot an approach to the hill just below the base of the clouds. Once we are stabilized in a hover, we will just hover up the side of the hill in the goo. You’ll be able to see the trees through the chin bubble. Just don’t look out the windshield,” the AC replied.

I was still fairly new to Vietnam. My aviation experience was a little more than usual for a first tour pilot, due to a year stateside flying OH-13E’s before coming to I Corps, but this little bit of experience did not prepare me for anything like this. Clouds look soft but sometimes they are very hard, like when they hold mountains inside their white mask. Like fog, clouds stop you from seeing forward and all pilots live by visibility when they are not taking off and landing on instrumented runways. If you can’t see, you don’t know where you are and there may be one of those “hard clouds” in front of you. And besides, clouds scared me after all the horror stories about vertigo and pilots coming out of clouds upside down, not healthy in a helicopter.

Being new to flying in Vietnam, I gave a mental shrug and continued on toward the firebase. The AC was like an instructor; you knew that he knew things you did not. The AC called the Pathfinder (the ground controller who directed helicopter traffic on every firebase) on the hill on the fox mike and asked him if they were ready for the load. When the Pathfinder replied they were, I noticed his voice sounded slightly surprised that we would even try to land a load on his hill in the fog. He told us that the visibility on the top was at or near zero. The AC “rogered” the Pathfinder, completed the landing check, and the crew reported ready. To my surprise, he left me at the controls instead of taking over himself. I began the approach to the green hillside halfway up the mountain.

I completed a more or less normal approach. Shuddering and shaking, the Chinook came to a hover over the trees at what I estimated to be about three quarters of the way up the mountain. Above us the trees all went white as they disappeared into the ragged clouds covering the upper portion of the hill.

I added more power and began to move the aircraft up the slope into the clouds. Just like the AC said, I could see the top of the trees well enough to hover the aircraft as we moved forward and up the hill. Sneaking a peek up through the windshield only showed a solid whiteness with no breaks. Quickly I returned my eyes down to the tops of the trees where there was some reference to right side up.

Coming onto the top of the hill, the trees were gone and I could see the rows of barbed wire passing under the nose of the aircraft. We had made it. When the hill flattened out on the top I could see forward well enough to see a ground guide to the right motioning the Chinook forward. Another man, apparently unaware of the first, was standing to the far left of the nose, also motioning us to him. Picking the man on the left, because I could see him more clearly, I hovered the Chinook forward toward him.

I saw the ground guide reach into the patch pocket of his jungle fatigues and pull out a smoke grenade. He must have remembered his training, i.e., you pop a smoke grenade for helicopters. He did not remember the part about only doing that when the helicopter is in flight, not when they are in a hover. Then he threw the smoke grenade under the front of the aircraft, on my side.

Fascinated, almost like watching a movie, I watched the green smoke completely blot out the little visibility I had. Now, except for being green, the view through the chin window matched the view through the windshield, zero.

“I can’t see anything at all. Nothing! You’ve got it!” I yelled over the intercom, my façade of calm gone.

“I can still see. I can still see! I’ve got the controls!” the AC yelled back, excited but not yet panicked.

He took the controls as I released them and tried to hold the aircraft steady. I still could not see enough to fly but I felt we were moving. We were, in fact, moving. The aircraft was sliding backwards across the top of the firebase, dragging the generator across the ground under us. It did not feel real somehow. I was back in the movie I was watching as the smoke grenade rolled under the aircraft.

When the AC took the controls, the Chinook had settled low enough that the 6,000-pound generator touched down as we started aft. As we moved backwards, we were dragging the generator across the top of the hill, with the same effect a bulldozer blade would have, i.e. clearing everything in its path. Our flight engineer was talking to us over the internal communication system (ICS), saying things like, “Bring it up, bring it up NOW”!!! but the AC was too occupied with trying to control the aircraft to hear or to respond. When the generator was approaching a bunker full of men trying desperately to stay out of its way, the Chief punched it off (hit the release that disconnects the sling from the cargo hook).

Remove 6,000 pounds from a helicopter without reducing a high power setting and the aircraft will climb. Climb fast, and in this case, since we were already moving backwards, climbing fast and backwards. That’s one nice characteristic of tandem rotor helicopters, like the CH-47 and its smaller brother, the CH-46. They fly just as well backwards as they do forwards, since they don’t have tail rotors to get in the way.

To us in the cockpit, time stopped. The AC and I looked at each other, opened-mouthed with surprise, shock, I don’t know what, but at the moment, neither of us was flying the Chinook. We were, in effect, passengers.