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

by Robert F. Curtis

  The first men through the terminal door more or less just stopped barely inside. As the rest of us came in, we were met with the sight of a fancy restaurant inside the terminal, just to the right of the door we had just entered. Every table appeared full, people dressed for a night out, food and wine bottlesand candles lit and sparkling on the tables, but no one was talking or drinking. Every head was looking directly at us.

  I looked past the faces turned our way, back through the window out toward the ramp. The glass was clear enough to see through the window from the inside to the outside, but from the ramp the glass was too dark to see from the outside to the inside. The four helicopters parked on the ramp were clearly visible. There, also clearly visible, about half way between the Hueys and the restaurant, was a large dark puddle on the ramp blacktop. No one said a word, but the offending pilot stepped forward and keeping a straight face, took a small bow, and with that, we all proceeded to the weather office and our briefing for the return flight.

  When we went back to the aircraft past the restaurant we all looked straight ahead but I did notice that the voices from the tables trailed off as we passed. Maintain cool, always, and pretend that nothing happened. Pilots are usually good at that.

  * * *

  But that was last year and I have to meet minimums this year. Now it’s December 27th and I have to fly tonight because the Aviation Facility is closed after tonight until after New Year’s Day, so it’s fly now or explain to a flight disposition board why I could not manage to do something as simple as get a few hours of nighttime flight in an entire year. Fortunately, I was not alone. My copilot, also a UK student, was in the exact same situation. He only needed one hour but had agreed to stay with me for the entire two hours. He could have said no and I could have been totally by myself for an hour, bouncing a Huey up and down with a sandbag in the left seat to bring it up to the minimum cockpit weight of 240 pounds.

  I drove over from Lexington to Frankfort in the rain, thinking black thoughts the entire 40-minute trip. Just blow the two hours off and bluff through the disposition board. Sit in the office for two hours, drink coffee and pencil whip it (just write the time in the log book instead of flying it). No, I would do none of these things. I would hover the God-damned Huey for two hours in the rain. It was my fault I did not get the time so it was now my responsibility to get it.

  I am wet from preflighting in the rain. I am pissed off because it is raining and December 27th and I want to be home with my family. I start the aircraft under the red map lights and relax some as I feel the rotor blades start turning as the engine lights off. The Huey is rocking its familiar rhythm as I bring it up to full RPM, taking me back to all my other flights in this model helicopter. The Huey’s sounds fill the world outside my helmet, the high-pitched sounds of the engine turbines and the transmission as the RPM increases, the thump of the rotor blades. The cockpit turns a deep red as I adjust the instrument lights to the level I need, their red lamps glowing dim on the gray dash.

  Checklist complete, I turn on both the landing light and searchlight as I lift the aircraft into a three-foot hover. No large “beat” to indicate that the rotor blades are out of balance, no strange vibrations or sounds either—the aircraft is ready to fly. Adding a little collective pitch and a little left rudder as I slightly lower the nose, I move the aircraft out onto the taxiway and hover toward the runway. Frankfort is an uncontrolled field so there is no ground control or tower to talk to, and since the weather is just too bad to fly in, tonight we have it to ourselves.

  Before moving onto the airport’s single runway for takeoff, I would make a blind call over the common VHF radio frequency so that any other aircraft coming in to land would know we were there. I hold off making the call since I am not going to take the runway just yet. I stop just short of the runway and slide the Huey left over the grass on the far side of the runway lights. After a moment, I land the aircraft and turn the controls over to the other pilot.

  My copilot spends 15 minutes picking the aircraft up to a hover, turning on the spot using the rudder pedals, hovering forward, hovering backwards, sliding left, sliding right, landing, picking up to a hover. The rain continues to fall, our windshield wipers doing their usual miserable job of removing it even with the rotor blades slicing the rain into smaller drops. The OAT (outside air temperature) gauge shows 10 degrees centigrade, still too warm for ice here in a hover, but still too cold to go any higher into the sky. The bleed air heater pulls hot air from the engine to provide warmth inside the aircraft. After 15 minutes, it has brought the cockpit temperature up to something comfortable and is drying my wet flight jacket. Only an hour and a half to go.

  As we take turns hovering the Huey around, my thoughts drift in boredom to how the controls work on helicopters. The cyclic controls had exactly the same function on the CH-47Cs that I flew in Vietnam two years ago and the UH-1H I was flying tonight, smart on the Army’s part, since all rotary-wing aviators are qualified in Huey’s. This makes it easier to transition from utility Hueys to cargo Chinooks. The coolie hat on the cyclic works the electric trim in pitch and roll. The top left button releases the springs that hold the cyclic in place.

  Through my right flight glove, the cyclic grip feels smooth and natural, its buttons and the trim switch coolie hat switch is right where they should be for easy use; right where I learned they would always be on this model aircraft. My index finger can squeeze the switch on the back of the cyclic to the first detent for ICS, the intercom, and on to the second detent to transmit over the communications radios. My little finger rests on the pickle switch that would release the external load if we had one.

  My thumb can move the coolie hat to fine trim the cyclic to whatever position I want to select so that the cyclic will stay there without input from the pilot. You don’t have to use the trim, but if you don’t, you need either to hold it against the springs or use the top left button to release the trim entirely, which you would do for gross control position changes. In combat, particularly when going into a hot zone, the pilot at the controls always trims the stick for level or climbing flight and holds it against the springs for the landing. He does this so that if he is shot and no longer controlling the helicopter, it will start upward and the other pilot will have a chance to get on the controls before it hits the ground.

  That’s the theory anyway…

  Hueys have a handy set of two red levers on the lower back of the pilot’s armored seats. Pull them both up and the seat rotates backwards so that the shot pilot can be removed from the seat in flight. Handy, that…

  My thoughts come back to flying. Hover forward, hover backwards, set down on the skids, lift up to three feet again—another hour and fifteen minutes to go. The rain is still falling. The windshield wipers continue their sweep.

  While my right hand works the cyclic, my left hand has the collective pitch lever. On the forward end of the collective is a small box with the beep trim switch and the landing and searchlight switches. The beep trim button is what the pilot uses to set the computer that holds the engine at a particular RPM. On a Huey, it is normally 6,600 RPM, a speed that is neither the rotor speed nor the speed of the compressor in the turbine engine, it’s just a number on the gauge that provides a reference for the pilot to know all is well. Some helicopters show the actual rotor speed, like a Chinook, but not the Huey. The thumb part of the glove that works the beep button is often the first part of the glove to wear out, at least for C model Chinook pilots since you have to often beep one or the other of the engines up or down to keep them matched. Not on a Huey though, only one engine on a Huey, so set it at 6,600 RPM and leave it to the computer to keep it there.

  When you try to pull more power than the engine can produce, the rotor speed decreases, you “droop turns.” Sometimes helicopter’s “normal” rotor speed, the one you routinely use for flying, is just a bit above the ideal RPM. That way, when you droop turns, you are actually going toward a more efficient RPM and may be able to gain
a momentary advantage. All pilots know it is only momentary and to continue to droop will inevitably result in a loss of altitude. Lose enough rotor RPM and the helicopter will quit flying. If the engine quits you’ve got less than three seconds to get the collective down or your rotor speed will droop so low that you cannot recover. As the instructors said back at Fort Wolters, at that point your rotor blades, your wings, have stalled completely and your craft has all the aerodynamic properties of a footlocker.

  The collective has a coolie hat too; only instead of cyclic trim this coolie hat controls the direction of the searchlight. Huey’s have two lights, the landing light which is fixed in position, pointing more down than forward, and the search light, which the pilot can move to see some particular area better. Back at Fort Rucker we were taught to put the searchlight at about a 45 degree angle before takeoff so that if the engine quits you can turn on both the landing and searchlight and use the searchlight to see what’s in front of you as you flare the aircraft to break your rate of descent. At that point the nose is way up and you should be able to see with the landing light.

  Gallows humor says that in the event of a complete loss of engine power at night, the pilot should turn on both the landing and searchlights. If he does not like what he sees, he should turn them off.

  The throttle on helicopters like the UH-1H and the OH-58A is a twist grip, the same as a motorcycle throttle, only backwards. This caused minor problems for new student pilots back at Fort Wolters but everyone soon got over it. The Huey throttle has a detent that prevents the pilot from completely closing it inadvertently and unintentionally shutting the engine down. To start the Huey you first roll the throttle all the way on, then back it off to the detent, push the release button and move the throttle to just below the detent before you pull the starter trigger. The reason for this is that all sorts of bad things can happen when you start a helicopter.

  The first is a hot start. In a hot start, instead a rising normally, the engine temperature shoots way past the normal range and can quickly damage the engine or even give you an engine fire. To counter it, you close the throttle and motor the engine without fuel to suck in air and cool it down.

  In some aircraft the next possible problem is a “quick start.” In this situation, instead of the engine turning up normally, a rather slow orderly process, the engine immediately goes to full power. This time the danger is to the entire drive train; engine, transmission, tail rotor drive shaft, 42 degree gear box, 90 degree gear box, etc. Again the procedure is to close the throttle and remove fuel from the engine.

  * * *

  My armed helicopter flight instructor at Fort Rucker had an abbreviated procedure for starting the Huey. He was an old UH-IC “Charlie Model” gunship pilot between tours in Vietnam and had apparently lost all fear of death. Maybe he thought that death was waiting for him back in Vietnam and nothing would kill him in Alabama, I don’t know because WOCs didn’t ask instructors things like that. Instructors were gods and gods would not let you down.

  His preflight consisted of comparing the number he wrote in ink on the web of his left hand with the number in big orange letters on the side of the helicopter. If they matched, he untied the aircraft and climbed in. His checklist did not consist of the normal JM or KH items, instead it was: seat belt on, helmet and gloves on, then battery on, fuel on, throttle full open then closed to the detent and moved just below it. He would yell out the open door, “CLEAR,” warning anyone close to the aircraft he was starting it and pull the start trigger. When the igniters (think of them as sparkplugs used for lighting off a turbine) began their electrical “snap, snap, span” he would smile and look like the happiest man in the world. As soon as the engine started winding up he would roll the throttle full on, and while adjusting the beep to bring it to 6,600 RPM he would turn on the radios, slam the door closed and call for taxi, checklists be damned.

  * * *

  The throttle setting on the Huey is completely different from the Kiowa, the OH-58A or Jet Ranger in its civil version, which we also flew here in the Guard. On the 58, you start with the throttle closed and wind it up when the engine reaches a certain RPM. It is easy to see that a pilot has forgotten which aircraft he is flying and uses the Huey procedure on the Kiowa. There is a roar and a ball of flame when the engine lights off, instead of the steadily increasing whine of the turbine. No damage, no foul, most of the time.

  I turn the controls back over to the other pilot. It is again his turn to hover around the field for a while. Just to do something different, he lowers the nose and begins a takeoff run over the grass paralleling the runway. The rain hits harder against the windshield as we gather speed, increasing the drip on my leg from the bad seal. He holds the aircraft ten feet off the ground as we pass the shudder of translational lift. As the end of the field approaches, he goes into a slight side flare to slow the aircraft without the danger of sticking the tail rotor into the ground. Stable in a hover now, he pedal turns the aircraft 180 degrees and does it again headed in the opposite direction. The wind appears to be calm so it doesn’t really matter which direction we takeoff. Thirty minutes to go.

  The rudder petals adjust back and forth using a knob on the deck of the helicopter in front of the cyclic. A Huey’s rudder petals are substantial metal things with “Bell,” the company that manufactured them, in raised letters on them. In American and British helicopters, the rotors turn counterclockwise when you add power, while in French and Russian helicopters they turn clockwise. Why? Beats me, but they do. For the pilot, the difference is that in American single rotor helicopters, you add left rudder when you lift up. In the Russian and French helicopters, you add right. Of course, to an experienced pilot it makes no difference since they only add what rudder is required, i.e. if the wind is strong enough from the right you might add right rudder instead of left when you lift to a hover. Fifteen minutes to go.

  It is still raining and windshield wipers still slide back and forth across the Plexiglas. I am thinking of the first time I ever sat in a Huey cockpit. Back at Fort Rucker, in the summer of 1969, we were about to finish up our instrument training in the TH-13t Sioux and start our transition to the Huey. We were strongly encouraged to learn the start checklist before we actually got to the flying part of training so that the instructors would not have to waste time on trivia and could move into the actual flying part. We were told to go to one of the three main heliports at Fort Rucker and dry practice, that is go through the start checklist without actually moving any of the switches, of course. I was sitting in the cockpit of a D model Huey dutifully dry practicing when a maintenance contractor came up and asked me to start her up. He needed to check something and the aircraft had to be running to do the check. Part of me wanted so badly to fire that Huey up, but I didn’t do it. I was too close to finishing up to risk damaging a Huey and getting washed out.

  When you washed out of flight school in 1969, they handed you a rifle and sent you to the rice paddies. And that was no theory…

  Ten minutes to go. I hover the aircraft back into the National Guard compound still holding a standard three-foot hover. We fudge the last five minutes and shut it down. The rain is still falling as we sit and watch the rotor slow to a stop. The Huey doesn’t have rotor brake so we “help” it slow down by adding full left rudder, putting pitch on the tail rotor blades to use up a little of the energy left as the rotor blades slow to a stop. I climb out of the cockpit into the rain and throw the rope end of the blade tie-down strap over the forward stopped blade and pull it down so that I can put the metal hook in the ring on the end of the blade. I walk the blade around the aircraft until I can tie the rope end to the tail boom. My copilot joins me as I am finishing up and we walk back over to Operations to close out the aircraft log book for this flight and my flying for the year.

  One hour later I am back home in Lexington and am again a student. My flight suit is still damp as I climb out of my car.

  Private Bob Curtis during basic training at Fort Polk,
Loisiana, 1968.

  Curtis as a Warrant Officer Candidate (WOC), Fort Wolters, Texas, 1969.

  WOC Curtis with an OH-23D “Raven” at Fort Wolters, Texas, 1969.

  CW2 Curtis with CH-47C in revetment at Camp Evans, Vietnam, 1971.

  CH-47C carrying 500 gallons of fuel or water bladders (aka Elephant Nuts), Camp Eagle, Vietnam, 1971.

  UH-1H shot down in Laos, one of 107 helicopters lost during Lam Son 719, 1971.

  Battle damage to Playtex 820 flown by CW2 Curtis, March 4, 1971.

  Curtis with silenced M3 grease gun, 1971.

  CH-47C with 8,000 pounds of 105mm artillery ammunition, Camp Eagle, RVN, 1971.

  Gravity hot refueling a CH-47C, RVN, 1971.

  An M-60 gunner’s view over RVN, 1971.

  CH-47F ready for night flight on the deck of the USS Guam, 1989. Photo courtesy of David Libbey

  CW2 Curtis in the cockpit of a CH-47, August, 1971.

  Clearing a site for a fire support base in Northern I Corps, Vietnam, via napalm, 1971.

  CW2 Curtis with Kentucky National Guard UH-1H, 1973.

  Bob Curtis and his son, Master Rob Curtis, with an OH-58A Kiowa at Blue grass Field, Lexington, Kentucky, 1974.

  Captain Bob Curtis in an HMM-264 CH-46F Sea Knight, France, 1986.