Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond

by Robert F. Curtis

  You are in your seat and ready for the start checklist. Four-point seat belt and shoulder harness on over the chicken plate, .38 pistol in its cowboy holster moved from your right side to between your legs for a little extra protection, even if it is just psychological. The copilot calls the items on the checklist and you do them and the checklist goes quickly by. The small turbine engine, auxiliary power unit (APU), which drives the flight boosts and powers the electronics when the engines are not running, comes on line and then you are starting the engines. Since there is no rotor brake on a Chinook to hold the rotors still, as you start the engines the noise increases and the aircraft starts rocking unevenly as the big blades, three on the front and three on the back, start to turn slowly. It’s a rhythmic rocking until the blades get into phase (90 degrees apart), and then it smoothes to a steady vibration. Then the blades turn faster and faster. Using the condition levers in the center of the console, you take the engines from the ground position to the fly position and with the increasing whine of the turbines, the individual blades become a solid disk to the eye. As the blades achieve sync, the rocking goes away and the motion becomes a smooth vibration, almost a hum.

  Checklist complete, you are ready to taxi and your flight engineer sees you are the first ready out of all the aircraft flying this morning. He stands in front of the aircraft and motions you forward out onto the main taxiway. Before you move, you call Liftmaster tower for taxi clearance and you are cleared into position and hold. Because you were parked in the front row, you get first place in line on the short runway facing east, waiting for takeoff clearance.

  There are eight aircraft turning now, though only six are required for missions today. If one of the six breaks on run-up, the AC will unstrap and go to one of the two backups while the original copilot completes the shutdown of the broken bird.

  Ground taxiing a Chinook using all four sets of wheels is a two-man operation. The copilot works the thrust and cyclic, while holding the rudders neutral. The AC works the brakes and steers using the power steering knob on the center console. Only the right wheel is power driven, the left just trails along. When you are ready to move, the copilot adds a little thrust and moves the cyclic to two inches aft. The AC releases the brakes and uses the power steering to move the aircraft in the direction he wants to go. With familiar teamwork, the two of you smoothly move the Chinook into takeoff position on the runway.

  The Chinook’s familiar roar through your helmet ear pads and vibrations through the seat, floor, and flight controls feel good, feel strong. You are fully awake now and are ready to go, ready to go fly. You are 21 years old and your body is whole and none of your joints hurt and your eyes are clear with 20/10 vision and you command this machine and this crew. The sky is lighter in front of you now and as you wait for takeoff clearance, you get a sense of power that wasn’t there when you were half asleep going through the routine motions of those things that you must do before you fly, satisfying the religious flying rituals. As the sun starts to move above the horizon, takeoff clearance comes from the control tower.

  As AC, you always make the first takeoff of the day. An inexperienced copilot might not feel something wrong with the aircraft before it’s too late. You pull the cyclic back two inches with your right hand and add power with your left as you smoothly pull the thrust lever up.

  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.

  Sometimes 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 o
ff 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…

  The 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.