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

by Robert F. Curtis

  Leaving my open beer on the bar, I went behind the counter pulled two new ones from the refrigerator and went looking for the AC in question. I found him in his hootch, sitting still and silent in his desk chair with his chicken plate (body armor) and survival vest dropped on the floor beside him. He had tossed his helmet bag onto his bed. His pistol was in its holster lying on the desk where it should have been, and not in his hand, where I feared it might be. He was just looking across the room at nothing. I could see him through the screen, sitting there, just sitting. Without knocking, I went in and pulled his roommate’s chair next to his. He didn’t even look up as I sat down. I open the two beers with my church key, handed him one and took a pull on the other. They were flat and tasted of tin, but they were cold and had alcohol in them. We drank in silence until they were empty, not talking or even looking at each other. I finished mine first, threw the can into the trash and looked directly at him for the first time since I came in.

  “We’ve got a lot of ACs right now and the number of missions Division is sending us is slowing down. Would you like to stop flying now so that some of the newer ACs can get more flight time?” I asked, leaving him an open door, a way out without having to admit he was burned out.

  He looked back at me for the first time since I came into his room and took the offered open door.

  “Yes. Yes, I would,” he said, his voice tired and the strain apparent.

  It turned out that for his last few flights the AC would not let any of the copilots fly or even touch the controls. All day, every day for the last week, for somewhere around eight or more straight hours of flight time per day, the AC had been continually flying the aircraft instead of taking turns with the copilot, as was customary. He was respected for his flying and leadership over this tour and no one had said a word until finally this new copilot put his hands on the controls and said he wanted to fly. At that point the AC pulled out his pistol, pointed it at the copilot’s head and told him that if he touched the controls again he would kill him. And he just might have…

  “Yes. Yes, I would.”

  I tried to watch myself, but others saw it first. The first week into my twelfth month, and while still at least nominally the company senior IP, I found myself getting fewer missions and the ones I got were the easy ones. No Cobra escorts. No napalm drops. No night re-supplies. Finally I was assigned the aircraft recovery standby, usually the lowest tension mission Playtex had.

  Aircraft recovery standby consisted of sitting in the battalion tactical Operations Center (TOC) and waiting for a helicopter—anything smaller than a Chinook, since it usually took a CH-54 Flying Crane to lift a Chinook—to go down somewhere. Aircraft were often shot down, but even more often something simply failed; the pilot might have landed the aircraft in the closest spot available, and it was just too much trouble to fix whatever was wrong with it in the field. When that happened the aircraft recovery standby was called and we would pick up the downed bird and carry it as an external load back to Camp Evans or Phu Bai or Camp eagle, wherever the unit it belonged to was assigned. No big deal as far as an external lift went, a routine load, one all the ACs had done many, many times.

  However, an aircraft going down, whether shot down or merely broken, was a big deal to everyone else. A reinforced platoon of infantry was also on standby, as was a specially trained crew of riggers, the men who prepared the slings necessary to lift the aircraft as an external load. When Division made the decision to recover an aircraft, the infantry platoon would be lifted to the spot by Hueys while the on-call Cobras orbited over-head to provide air cover. Once the landing zone was secured by the grunts, the riggers would be inserted into the LZ by their own Hueys with their gear. If the aircraft was intact and upright, they would rig it for a routine external load. If it went in un-controlled and was more or less in pieces, they might wrap it in a cargo net. The grunts would provide security while the riggers worked. Most of the time, eight out of ten anyway, the birds would just have a mechanical problem that was too hard to fix in the field. With shot down aircraft, Division normally waited until things had cooled down before they called for the Chinook to pick them up. Most times.

  The standby Chinook always flew from our home heliport to the spot set aside by the battalion TOC, near the runway at Phu Bai, to wait. The AC went to the bunker to wait for a call while the pilot and crew hung around the bird, sunbathing, writing letters, sleeping. When a mission came, the HAC would get the brief and go out to the bird, ready for whatever the mission required. When the recovery had been made, the duty bird would return to the helipad and wait for the next mission. At dusk, they would fly back to their home heliport, mission complete. No recoveries were done at night, too dangerous all the way around. It was also very rare for a mission to involve hot landing zones; again, too dangerous for the grunts, riggers, hookup men and helicopter crews. Why lose more aircraft when you’ve already lost one at that spot? So, recovery standby was usually a nice easy mission, requiring some skill but no real nerve, perfect for a soon-to-be burnout.

  I was in the TOC, reading a paperback when the first call came in. A Cobra was down on a ridge, close to the Rock Pile, up near the DMZ. Not shot down, but an engine failure, which unfortunately occurred while the crew was shooting it out with an NVA 12.7mm machine gun. Hot zone, but the Cobra crew does a magnificent job of autorotating their powerless helicopter to a very small, clear spot and then, since there is no place to land another helicopter, rides out, draped over the stub wing of their wingman, hanging on to the rocket pods to keep from falling off. Division commanding general (CG) is pissed, not at the crew, but at the thought of losing a Cobra to an engine failure and wants that Cobra back. At the call “Launch the recovery standby,” my aircraft will be on its way north very shortly.

  I’ve got my map out, though I knew the area where the bird went down very well. It’s a skinny ridge by the looks of the map, with contour lines very close together. More information is coming into the TOC now. The Cobra pilot says he autoed in, was right on top of another couple of NVA digging another gun pit. Reports are coming in from other aircraft about seeing many NVA in the area. F-4’s called and will be overhead shortly. Artillery is shooting up the area already. My rectum is puckering as I listen. The recovery plan is simple. They launch the grunt security element in a combat assault to a zone just below the Cobra’s position. The grunts will fight their way up to the downed bird if they have to, and secure it for the riggers. Other Cobras are shredding the jungle all around the downed aircraft with their rockets and miniguns as the grunts start their way up. NVA tracers are coming back at them, but it’s hard to see where the fire is coming from through the thickness of the jungle trees. The NVA must be rattled since their fire is ineffective; at least so far, it’s ineffective.

  Before I leave the TOC, I tell a runner to alert my crew while I get as much information as I can. In a few moments I hear the Chinook’s APU start up, followed by both engines. “Burn, burn goddamn you, burn,” I think to myself, hoping the NVA will light the Cobra up and set off the fuel tanks or the rocket pods before the grunts get there. It doesn’t happen. They do light it up, but the Cobra refuses to burn.

  The aircraft is completely ready to go as I strap in and brief the crew over the ICS. They know perfectly well where we are going and that it will be hot when we get there. No one runs to the aircraft for a routine recovery. No one says a word, except those few required to get us airborne. “Takeoff checklist complete,” says the copilot. “Ready in back,” says the flight engineer, and I am climbing out, turning north as I go. The copilot knows better than to ask if he can fly, not this time. Thirty minutes later, at 6,000 feet altitude, I can see the black smoke on the green ridge still ten miles away to the north. It’s a pretty day for I Corps, blue sky above green mountains, puffy clouds up above us, all the way into North Vietnam fifteen miles away.

  As we get closer, I see new smoke coming from flashes on the hillside. Artillery? No, then I see the F-4 pulli
ng off target and his wingman rolling in. Jets, Cobras, artillery, all for one downed Cobra. My flight engineer came up front, something he rarely did, to watch the action through the cockpit windows. I looked over at him but neither of us said a word and after a few moments he returned to his position in the cabin and lay down on his stretcher, ready to make the hookup.

  As we flew toward the smoke, I told the crew all I knew. The Cobra had an engine failure while engaging an anti-aircraft machine gun position. It had just refueled and re-armed so it was heavy. We had 6,000 pounds of fuel when we took off and would have around 5,000 when we got there, which made us heavy. It would take everything we had to lift it from the ridge where it rested.

  As we got to within five miles, I could see the F-4s departing the area. Now the Cobras and their LOACH were working the area, talking to each other, calm and relaxed as they did their mission—major cool points for all of them.

  “Little Bird, Gun One, you got a 12.7mm tracking you from your three o’clock.”

  “Gun One, Little Bird, don’t see him. Can you do something about that?”

  In the distance, I could see a Cobra rolling in and the streaks of his 2.75mm FFAR as they went toward the green hillside, then an orange flash and another, then gray smoke among the green of the forest.

  “Gun One, Little Bird. I see him now. You got him. Want me to pick up the gun?”

  “Little Bird, Gun One. Nah, leave it, It’s bound to be fucked up anyway.”

  Pucker. I’m puckering, sucking the seat cushion up my ass, my hand is trying to crush the cyclic grip, and my legs are stiff against the rudder pedals. I take a deep breath to try to relax my hand, my legs. My Chinook is not a little LOACH dancing above the trees and dodging .50’s until the Cobras can kill the NVA gun crews. My Chinook is big and slow and ungainly, particularly when it has a broken Cobra swinging on a sling below it. I am an easy target for the machine gunners. Pucker. But I force myself to breathe deeply again and exhale slowly and relax my right hand on the cyclic and my legs on the rudders. The pucker remains, diminished, but still there. My right arm is starting to ache from squeezing the cyclic.

  I knew how high up the mountain the Cobra was when they gave me its position, but now it comes home to me. It’s nearly 4,000 feet above sea level on a narrow ridge. The day is hot, the wind is light, my aircraft is heavy with fuel. Lifting this load is going to be close to all the aircraft can do and close to all I can do.

  As we approach, I can see three Hueys orbiting to the east, over the lowlands. They had brought in the riggers and the infantry security and will pick them up after I get the Cobra out. The two Cobras that took out the 12.7mm machine gun are above the pickup zone. Two more Cobras are orbiting to the north, ready to come in when the first section runs low on rockets or 7.62mm minigun rounds. I cannot see the LOACH, but he’s there right above the trees, searching for more 12.7mm’s.

  I can see the downed Cobra now and can see the hookup man standing on top of it, holding the donut up as he waits for my Chinook to come overhead. For a second I think about who has less fear of death, the LOACH pilot presenting himself as a target so the Cobras can come down to kill the NVA, or the hookup man, standing there high against the sky, a target for all as he holds the donut high.

  “Load coming under,” I call.

  “Load in sight, forward ten,” my flight engineer replies.

  I see nothing now but the pickup. I am the Chinook. It takes no conscious actions on my part to make the machine do what I want it to do, to go where I want it to go. It is almost like I am outside the aircraft watching as it comes over the load.

  “Forward five, four, three, hold your forward. Load’s hooked, up twenty. Slowly, tension’s coming on the sling. Sling’s tight. Up twenty. Hold you forward, up, up. Load’s off. Jesus, it’s shot up. Hold your forward. Up ten. Steady,” the flight engineer calls, but I am looking at the torque as I hold the aircraft over the ridge. It is taking everything this aircraft has and I have not yet lifted the broken Cobra the twenty feet we need to get it to clear the trees around the zone. The Chinook’s engines can produce no more. If I pull more thrust, rotor speed will drop, maybe to the point where the aircraft settles into the ground, with the dragging Cobra pulling it down in a crash.

  When stressed, pilots seem to go into a zone of relative time. In your mind, events stop, or at least slow way down. You can step back mentally and view things from different angles. In my moment of relative time, I considered what to do. Put the Cobra back down and fly away to burn off a thousand pounds of fuel? No, that would mean leaving the grunts on the hill to hold the position for another 30 minutes, maybe enough time for the NVA to kill some of them. Maybe enough time to get another machine gun into place to kill my fat, slow Chinook with its ungainly load swinging below it, sky-lighted above the ridge.

  Relative time ends and real time returns to normal speed and I pull the thrust lever up rapidly to use all the power I have to get the load above the trees before my rotor turns droop and I settle the aircraft back down to the ground. At the same time, as we climb out, burning up the momentum from the last of the added thrust, I push the nose of my Chinook over and we dive down the mountain, the Cobra swinging below us just barely clearing the trees as we fall down the mountainside. Everything the Chinook has is now applied. There is no power left. My crew does not talk or maybe they do, but I don’t hear.

  Fly. I need to get enough speed so that I can fly with the load. Fly. I am trading altitude for airspeed to get there and I must get there, say at least sixty knots, before I have no more altitude left to trade. We stay just above the green tops of the trees in our dive down the mountain, our external load Cobra probably too close to the treetops. God, don’t let it snag in the treetops. Flying now. Flying, vibrating and shaking now, but flying. With our speed, we no longer require all the power the Chinook has to stay in the air, but I don’t reduce it. I want to get away. The Chinook is flying and now it smoothes out as we end our dive down the mountainside and begin to climb, climb above the altitude where the NVA can hit us with small arms and then even above the altitude where they can hit us with machine guns, as we pass through 5,000 feet out over the low lands.

  “Load’s riding steady,” I hear the flight engineer call as I climb the aircraft and its load away from the smoke of battle behind us. The riggers have done a good job. The drogue chute is steadying the Cobra and keeping its nose more or less straight with my Chinook as we cruise southeast at 90 knots. Looking off to starboard, I see the Huey’s that were waiting for us to clear, now headed in to pick up the grunts and riggers waiting in the zone.

  “Nice job, Playtex,” someone calls over the UHF or fox mike, but I know better. I risked my crew unnecessarily to recover a shot-to-pieces hulk of an aircraft. But that was the mission and the mission must be done.

  Thirty minutes later, I drop the Cobra at Camp Evans. We fly on back south to Camp eagle to refuel and then back toward the battalion TOC to wait for the next load. But as I report inbound from refueling, the TOC releases us to return to Playtex and Liftmaster Pad. Darkness is too close now for another recovery so we can go back home and call it a day.

  Suddenly I am tired, very tired. I realize I have flown every minute since we took off from battalion three hours ago and my right hand and arm hurt from squeezing the cyclic grip. My copilot never said a word about wanting to take the controls.

  Tired. The voices of my crew seem distant as we go through the shutdown checklist. As the APU comes off line, and the blades slowly spin to a stop, shut down is complete, the aircraft now secure in its steel revetment. I look out through my window to see the other company IP and the Ops O standing outside the rotor disk watching the blades slow to a stop, dipping close to the PSP (pierced steel planking) as they complete their final turns. Gathering my gear, I climb out of the aircraft and walk over to them.

  “Would you like to quit flying now?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would.

  ” Yes, yes, I would. On A
ugust 7, 1971 my combat missions in Vietnam were done. I never flew a Chinook again.

  FLYING LIFE TWO

  * * *

  THE NATIONAL GUARD

  1972–1975

  The US Army was nearly destroyed by 1972. Drugs, the unending war in Vietnam, and the growing fight against it at home—all of it came together to bring morale to a very, very low level. I came back from Vietnam gung-ho in 1971, a budding lifer, but within a year I requested release from active duty so that I could go to college full time. A former active duty Army aviator, now a student at the University of Kentucky, suggested I join the National Guard while I was going to school like he had done. I would still get to fly and the extra money would help. He told me that the Kentucky State Aviation Officer, a colonel, was coming down to Ft. Campbell and I should talk to him. I leaped at the chance and called the colonel. He agreed to meet, so I picked him up at the airfield and took him to lunch at the Officer’s Club. He invited me to Frankfort to see their operation, so a week later I went to the Boone National Guard Center for an interview. After we talked, the colonel said, “Let’s go flying.” I declined on the grounds that I did not have flight gear, but he said it would not be a problem. So, in civilian clothes with only a flight helmet, I started up a UH-1H and we took it around the traffic pattern for an hour. He liked my flying and I was formally invited to join the Kentucky Army National Guard as a CW2. I accepted immediately.

  13

  TRUCK STRIKE

  BOWLING GREEN, KENTUCKY ■ JANUARY 1973

  “2II3th Transportation Company, you call—we haul. We got J-bys, L-bys, and them great big mothers that bend in the middle and the brakes go SHUUUU.” (My company’s standard telephone greeting, circa 1975)

  When the call came from a fellow student at the University of Kentucky, a National Guard captain when he wasn’t studying accounting, I could not believe it was real. I knew him as a friend, and while I knew he was a captain in the Guard, I didn’t think of him as a “Captain” like the RLO (Real Live Officers, as opposed to warrant officers) captains I had known when I was on active duty in the Army. He was just a fellow student and friend that I flew with now and then.