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

by Robert F. Curtis

  Then in a minute, the view of the destruction of people’s lives came back to us and we laughed no more on that flight.

  After an hour, we were finished with the tour of the disaster. I dropped the governor, the general, and the farmers off at Somerset. As he walked away from the Huey, the general turned and saluted us. We shut down, refueled again, started up and flew back to Frankfort, hovered into the parking spot, and shut the Huey down for the last time that day. As we walked back toward the Operations section, the ground crew was headed the other way to remove the VIP kit and bring it back to standard H model troop lift configuration. And to wash the tobacco juice off the floor…

  My state active duty was over and the next day I was a student again.

  16

  NATIONAL GUARD SUMMERS

  GULF PORT, MISSISSIPPI AND

  FORT EUSTIS, VA ■ JUNE 1974

  Normally the National Guard pilots do one weekend a month and two weeks in the summertime, summer camp, active duty, plus 24 AFTPs (Authorized Flight Training Periods). The AFTPs required that you spend four hours on duty and fly at least an hour to get credit (and pay) for a full day’s duty. As a student I needed as much active duty as I could get, and if I could get an additional summer camp or an Army school, I would be in clover—two more week’s full pay, including flight pay, would go far toward easing the next school semester.

  My two summer camps in 1974 consisted of one real summer camp at Gulf Port, Mississippi, and then two weeks at the Army’s Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Warfare School at Fort Knox, Kentucky. The former was much more fun than the latter.

  The actual summer camp would be first, then a two-week break back home before Fort Knox. My National Guard unit flew into Gulf Port, en mass—well, as much as four helicopters, two Hueys and two Kiowas can be called a mass—for our two weeks of active duty. Our National Guard U-6 Beaver, a high wing tail dragger built in Canada by de Havilland, very popular in Alaska and other rough areas, also came down, but since it cruises at 80 knots, it was even slower than our helicopters and so came on its own. The Beaver still beat us to Gulfport; though it was slower, it could hold its 80 knots for nearly six hours and so did not have to stop and refuel after every hour and a half of flight. For us helicopter pilots the flight down to Mississippi was particularly boring—clear weather, a couple fuel of stops and we were there. We did not fly into nearby Kessler Air Force Base but rather into the military half of Gulfport’s civilian field a few miles away. Army pilots tend to avoid Air Force bases when they can. The US Air Force is just too different from the US Army for either group to be comfortable around the other when it comes to aviation; in those days it was way too serious. The Seabees had a base at Gulfport as did the Mississippi Air Guard, and we would be sharing it with them for our two weeks.

  My billet, my job, in the Army National Guard was the best a young warrant officer could ever have: by billet, I was a pilot. Another WO-1 and I were the only “pilots” in the company, although six of the eight other officers were rated Army aviators. They had jobs like CO (commanding officer), XO (executive officer), shop officers, etc., but my friend and I were “pilots,” with the job of flying the two Hueys or the two Kiowas to bring maintainers to aircraft down in the field, pick up parts when required, in the event of war. But in peacetime we only did our job when we flew a couple hours a day to keep our skills up and coincidently, to keep the CO and XO from assigning us other jobs.

  At the Gulfport Seabee base, all the officers lived in a row of barracks converted from open squad bay into a series of double rooms. The junior officers, i.e. all the warrant officers, were two to a room, while the senior officers, the captains and our major CO, had private rooms. We two “pilots” were assigned the end room of the building. On the first night, we made an interesting discovery: we had the temperature control for the entire building in our room. We promptly closed off two of the three vents in our ceiling and then turned the dial on the thermostat down as low as it would go. We were just cool enough while the other officers froze all night.

  Some mornings we “pilots” would sleep in until the mess hall was closed and miss breakfast. We would then fire up one of the Hueys, taking along whoever could get away from the day’s scheduled events, and fly west down the Gulf Coast beaches to New Orleans Lakefront Airport. Lakefront, like Lunken in Cincinnati, had been New Orleans’ main airport until air travel and the planes grew too large. Like Lunken, it was now the general aviation airport and also like Lunken, it had a restaurant. We would land, shut the Huey down, and all of us go inside to have a breakfast of biscuits and red eye gravy, New Orleans food fit for kings. Afterwards, we would fly east, low and slow back up the coast to Gulfport doing the beach patrol, waving back at the girls on the sand as we passed. We flew just off shore, low enough to see everyone and everything but not low enough to scare anyone.

  Four days into the first week, my fellow “pilot” and I decided we would night fly, only instead of doing it in the evening as usual, we would do it in the morning. We got up at 0230 hours and walked over to the flight line. The OH-58A that we had been assigned was ready to go, so after a short preflight we were hovering out into the night at 0330 hours. Tower told us we were the only ones up and to enjoy ourselves, no need to call for each takeoff and landing. We called anyway and for some reason decided it would be good to use what we fancied a French accent. Tower just ignored us. We flew for two hours, basically until we had used up one load of fuel, and then hovered back in to the parking area and shut down. After finishing up the paperwork we walked over to the mess hall for breakfast. We were up early, so there was no need to fly down to New Orleans this morning, no matter how much fun it was.

  We had finished our coffee when the XO walked in.

  “Ah, just the man I was looking for. Pack up your gear and get ready to go. I’ll send a jeep to bring it over to the flight line. When you are packed I’ll see you at Ops,” he said to me.

  It seemed that the military Aviation Repair Depot at Pensacola, Florida, had finished re-work on a couple of our Hueys three weeks early and was ready for us to pick them up and remove them from their flight line. Our mission was to fly them from Pensacola back to Frankfort. The XO had another mission for me to follow that one. After dropping off the Huey, I was to pick up an OH-58A and fly it on to Fort Eustis, Virginia where the other half of our company was undergoing training. It was going to be a very long day….

  I would be the copilot on the first leg, Gulfport to Pensacola. The AC and I briefed quickly (We are here. We are going there. Done) and after our gear was secured in the back of the OH-58A we started the aircraft and headed out to the east down the coast. After a smooth flight through the morning Gulf Coast haze, we arrived at the Depot an hour and a half later.

  What a joy it was to see aircraft coming straight from the depot, before the oil stains from the various usual leaks, before the paint started to need touchup, before the rotor blades were blasted from sand in landing zones. Even the Huey’s interiors looked new, no marks on the dash, no crazing on the windshields or green houses. The new paint even gave them a new car smell. That would be gone by the time we got back to Frankfort, but they would stay beautiful for a month or two before they were just another aircraft on the ramp.

  Despite the new aircraft look and smell, we gave these Hueys a very, very detailed preflight. We trusted the depot with our lives, but these aircraft were new to us, unfamiliar, so it was important to get to know them before we headed north. We found only the most minor of discrepancies, nothing that would keep us from flying them. An hour after we started our preflights, we were ready to go. We all wanted to get into Frankfort before dark because it is a long flight in a helicopter from Florida to Kentucky; not by flying standards, perhaps, but sitting in a cockpit for eight plus hours was no longer second nature to us.

  I was flying with one of the senior officers in the company, an RLO, long past active duty. He was staying in the Guard as long as he could because Guardsmen
, like Reserves, cannot draw retired pay until they reach 60, so why retire before you were forced to? Because my billet was “pilot,” I signed for the aircraft and would be AC. The weather was typical southern summer, hot and sticky, with the possibility of afternoon thunderstorms, but suitable for visual flight rules (VFR) operations all the way north, so we filed a VFR flight plan as a flight of three.

  We left Pensacola and headed north to our first refueling stop. We were flying H model Hueys, so we had around two hours of fuel, about one hour forty before we got to our visual flight rules (VFR) reserve. Both the D and H models hold 1,400 pounds of jet fuel and for planning purposes, burn 600 pounds per hour, but old pilots always distrust the fuel gauges and subtract 100 pounds for the wife and another 100 pounds for each kid. We all like H’s better than the B’s of earlier days. The H was longer, with seats for four more passengers, had a bigger, more powerful engine, and best of all, held more fuel. The B was at fuel reserves in one hour and twenty minutes, although that could be stretched if you took it very easy.

  The B and L utility models and the C and m model gunships all had the short fuselage and small fuel capacity. Some crew chiefs back in Vietnam carried a foot-long piece of 4X4 lumber with them. When the aircraft went in for fuel, they would jump out and put the 4X4 under the back part of the right skid, tilting the aircraft to the left. This would let them put perhaps another five gallons of fuel in the tank, another few minutes of flying time.

  That was the theory anyway…

  * * *

  Our first stop was Birmingham, Alabama. I had been through Birmingham before, back when I was on active duty but before Vietnam. That flight too had been a ferry flight. At Fort Campbell, we had only six OH-13E Korean War veterans for helicopters. The Army decided we needed some more aircraft since many young aviators were being stashed there before being sent on to Vietnam. There wasn’t enough flight time available for everyone to get the required four hours per month with only six helicopters. All the combat aircraft, i.e. Those with turbine engines capable of carrying troops or weapons, were needed overseas, but some training aircraft, TH-13Ts, were available. So in March, 1970 two of us pilots and one maintainer were flown down to Fort Rucker to pick two and bring them up to Fort Campbell.

  We felt honored to be ferried to the pickup site in the Fort Campbell U-8A, a twin-engine fixed-wing usually reserved for the commanding general’s use. In short order, we were there at Cairns Army Airfield, Fort Rucker, Alabama. We stayed in the BOQ (Bachelor Officer’s Quarters) there, the very first time I ever stayed in officer quarters and not in a barracks. After we checked into the BOQ, I took a walk down memory lane and visited the Warrant Officer Candidate area where I finished up my initial flight training. Nothing had changed in the six months since I graduated, except of course this time, I was an officer and a rated aviator, not a candidate—a good feeling. Early the next morning we caught a ride out to where our aircraft awaited: Hanchey Army Heliport, the largest airfield in the world devoted strictly to helicopters.

  I had flown TH-13Ts on instrument training flights out of Hanchey like all the students who went through Fort Rucker did, but I was a student and only flew the aircraft once we had climbed out to altitude for instrument flight procedures training, no takeoffs or landings. The TH-13T had been fitted out with a full instrument flight panel, unlike its older cousin, the OH-13E that had no instruments beyond those for the engine and transmission. The “T” Model even had a side panel that pulled into place so that the student could not cheat by peeking outside the aircraft when he was supposed to be flying strictly by reference to the flight instruments. Instead of looking outside as normal, the student had to perform all maneuvers solely by scanning the attitude indicator, turn needle and ball, and the RMI (Radio Magnetic Indicator—a compass with two needles for navigation radios). Of course everyone tried to peek, pull out panel or not, since as the saying goes, “a single peek is worth a thousand scans”—unless of course you are actually in the clouds and there is nothing to peek at.

  The upshot of the TH-13T’s cockpit configuration was that unlike the OH-13E, you could not remove the doors when it got hot outside. The air coming in would scatter the papers the student needed to do instrument approaches and might interfere with the screen blocking the outside view, so the only ventilation was a small sliding window in the doors. Of course without the doors, the air would only come in when the aircraft was not in trim, but most students could not maintain good trim for more than a few seconds at a time anyway. So the doors remained on, and in the Fort Rucker, Alabama, summer, the heat was nearly unbearable while you were on the ground. Once a grease pencil, used to write radio frequencies on our kneeboards, melted in my hand, the black grease dripping on my leg.

  The maintenance warrant officer at Hanchey shook our hands and said, “There are your aircraft. Get them off my Goddamn ramp.”

  I was expecting a checkout in the aircraft before being turned loose, but they figured that since we were qualified in OH-13E’s, we were qualified in TH-13T’s. This was not a good assumption. The OH-13E had flight boost (sort of a hydraulic power steering that makes the controls lighter to move) only on the cyclic, the collective had nothing and was fairly stiff to move. If you let go of the collective it stayed right where you left it. The 13T had flight boost on both. There was no lag when you rolled the throttle in an OH-13E. The TH-13T was turbocharged, i.e. it used exhaust gas to compress air going into the engine for combustion, much better at altitude since power did not decrease, but it had a turbo lag of what seemed to be a half second from the time you first rolled the throttle on until the power started to increase.

  Climbing inside the TH-13T, I was assigned as the aircraft commander this time instead of a student. I vividly remembered all those flights six months before, sweating in the sun while trying to figure out how to make the helicopter do what I wanted it to do without looking outside. I did not remember how to start it because I had never started one before. I did not remember because students never started the aircraft, the instructor started it, hovered it out, and made the takeoff. When you returned, the instructor made the landing and hovered the aircraft back to its parking spot. The student’s job was to take over at altitude and complete the instrument maneuvers as directed. Fortunately for me this time, there was a checklist stuck in a side pocket so that I could figure out the starting sequence. It was close enough to the OH-13E that I managed without too much difficulty and got the aircraft started without breaking anything.

  I was the wingman, Chalk Two, in this flight. The other pilot was far more experienced than I, so he would lead and I would follow. Our aircraft were parked across from each other and I could see him looking my way after we were both completely ready to fly. After a “thumbs up” from me, he made the call to ground control for taxi. We got clearance and started to hover out to the takeoff pad. Not used to the turbo lag, I was up and down like a yo-yo all the way out to the takeoff pad. Pull too much power and start to climb above the proscribed three feet, take it off and nearly settle back to the ground—up and down all the 100 yards to the pad. My face was burning because in my head, I could hear the other pilots and ground personnel laughing. In retrospect, I doubt anyone laughed. I doubt anyone noticed because no one paid any attention to another TH-13T hovering out since they came and went all day, every day.

  At the takeoff pad, I completed the checklist, at least the OH-13E checklist, never mind I was in a TH-13T. Tower cleared us for takeoff and I added power and began to climb out. Passing through 200 feet, Tower directed us to change to the en route control frequency. I released the collective to reach for the radio dial and found myself in autorotation, headed for the trees directly in front of the aircraft—rapidly headed toward them, the ground coming up fast.

  I forgot that the TH-13T, unlike the OH-13E, had a fully boosted collective. As noted earlier, let go of the collective on a 13E and the collective does not move. Without the “power steering” effect of the hydraulic system,
the collective does not move until you move it. Not so on the TH-13T. Unless you friction down the collective (a wheel that lets the pilot adjust the feel of the collective from very light to completely locked), it will fall all the way down as soon as you release it; which is just what it did when I let it go and reached for the radio.

  It only took a half second for the situation to register in my brain, but before we reached the trees, I had grabbed the collective back and cranked on throttle to get us climbing again. Tower noticed, “H-13 on takeoff, do you have a problem?”

  “Negative, Tower. Switching frequencies,” I replied without too much trembling in my voice. It didn’t matter anyway because I had already lost all cool points for this flight. Not a good start to our three-day trip back to Fort Campbell.

  All was well after that because I tightened the friction on the collective enough that I could move it, but it would not fall on its own.

  Two other events kept this trip in my mind: the first came after our first refueling stop and RON in Montgomery, Alabama. We could have made it further but we had a late start after signing for and inspecting the aircraft. Also, we did not trust the fuel gauges on the aircraft since neither of us was really qualified in the TH-13T and had no feel for how much fuel it consumed per hour in cruise flight at 75 knots. It is better to do a real world fuel consumption check by seeing how much you burned in cruise, than it is to run out of fuel far from an airfield.

  After the hour and a half it took to fly the 80 miles from Fort Rucker, we landed at the civil airfield instead of Maxwell AFB, because we were not required to use military bases and generally speaking, in those days, the civilians were friendlier to old, slow Army helicopters than the Air Force was. We hovered over to one of the FBOs—the people that provide fuel and maintenance for civil (and sometimes military) aircraft. As they usually did, the FBO had a pretty girl in a short skirt wave to get our attention and when we headed in her direction, she guided us into a parking spot. FBOs long ago figured out that pilots prefer pretty girls to greasy mechanics when it comes to ground directors. They sell a lot more fuel that way. We were no exception and followed her direction to their ramp. Besides the pretty ground directors, the FBOs also gave S&H Green Stamps (for those too young to remember, the stamps were part of a rewards program between the 1930s and the 1980s), but we weren’t allowed to take them—might be considered a bribe.