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

by Robert F. Curtis

  Our crew chief had been listening to the radios and called from the back, “Got them in sight. They’re well clear.” that helped, but it was not a good start and promised that this would not be an easy flight.

  I now had my goggles on and mostly adjusted, and while I could see a green, snowy picture of the world outside the cockpit of the 46, I could not see very much else. I also could not see my hands or the instruments. The green toilet paper tube-like, circular view through the twin lenses of the NVGs was only 40 degrees, not the 180 plus pilots normally have.

  The instructor had me get on the controls with him as he pulled the aircraft up into a hover. I felt slightly disoriented as we lifted but followed him through as he moved the cyclic stick and collective. It was strange not being able to see the stick with my peripheral vision as he maneuvered the aircraft. I felt disconnected from normal reality and disoriented. No problem though, I was with an instructor…

  He did a few hovering turns and then sat the aircraft back down, only bouncing slightly. I could not see well enough to tell if we wobbled or not when we were in a hover. I had adjusted one eye to focus inside the cockpit and one eye to focus out, like they told us in class. Since the man flying had to adjust both eyes out of the cockpit to see where he was going, he could not see any of the instruments to tell how high he was, how fast he was going, how much power he had pulled in, what course he was on, or anything else. The other pilot watched all those with his one eye and called them out to the man at the controls. With the other eye, he would look out the window to make sure they weren’t about to fly into another aircraft or a mountain.

  That was the theory anyway…

  The instructor lifted the helicopter into a hover again and when I told him “all green” he nosed the aircraft forward for takeoff. As we climbed out, I called altitudes and airspeeds. In that trip around the traffic pattern, both altitude and airspeed varied to the point where it was like the first time a new flight student tried it in flight school, even though an experienced helicopter aircraft commander (HAC) was flying. After a shaky landing, he passed me the controls and it was my turn. I felt the seat cushion start up my rear end as the pucker factor kicked in.

  I was apprehensive, but, by God if he could do it, so could I. After adjusting my goggles so that both eyes were focused outside the aircraft, I took the controls and pulling power, wobbled into hover. I couldn’t see my hands or the stick position indicator to see how far back the stick was as I added collective. Until that moment, it had never occurred to me that pilots, or at least helicopter pilots, actually see the position of the flight controls with their peripheral vision and use that as a reference of where they should be for the maneuver.

  As we lifted up, I could not tell how high we were, I had no idea if we were in the prescribed 10-foot hover or were at 50 feet or 2 feet. I knew we were drifting in our hover, even though I was using all the experience and skill gained over nine years of helicopter flying to try to keep us steady. I was trying to crush the cyclic grip and my legs were ridged on the pedals. Taking a deep breath and slowly blowing it out, I tried to relax some.

  I finally was more or less stabilized in a hover when a car on the outskirts of the airfield turned toward us and his headlights hit the cockpit. As advertised in class, my goggles went blank. No, not really blank, blank. Just as the instructors told us, all I could see was what looked like a green fuzzy test pattern of the sort TV stations used to show when they weren’t on the air.

  “You’ve got it. I can’t see anything!” I said to the instructor as calmly as I could over the intercom. Death before loss of cool!

  The instructor must have been looking away when the car lights hit us because he answered, “I can see. I’ve got it,” and I felt his hands come on the controls. Still looking away from the car, he pedal-turned the helicopter to the left—directly toward the lights of a hanger. My goggles, which had been coming back to normal after being off for five seconds, went blank again.

  “Can you see?” he yelled through the intercom. No attempt at cool this time.

  “No,” I replied immediately.

  “Shit,” was all he said.

  Having no further ideas about what to do, the instructor just put the collective down, removing all power from the aircraft. We hit hard but level, and apparently we had landed on a clear spot, because the helicopter stayed upright. Marine Corps helicopters are designed to land hard on the decks of ships and we tested the design on that landing. From the back, we could hear the crew chief give a sort of primal scream. We could hear him over the aircraft noise. He had no goggles and the night was dark enough for him not to be able to see outside the aircraft, but he could hear us talking on the ICS.

  We stayed on the ground, still in goggles, while the crew chief checked the aircraft for damage. We all decided the landing was not as hard as other landings we’d done on pitching ships, because the “crash lights”—passenger compartment emergency lights that automatically come on at 3.5 G (G-force or gravitational force)—had not illuminated. The fact that we were off the runway and in the dirt helped, too; dirt is much softer than cement or steel deck plating. Fortunately, as noted earlier, it was level dirt and did not have a tree growing out of it. No damage, this time…

  When our hearts were under control, we lifted off to a hover again, still on the NVGs. I managed to takeoff and get it around the pattern, at least as well as the instructor had done. Not much to be proud of, but at least it was something. For much of the time while we were in the air, we could not really tell how high we were, or our course, and we relied instead on the flight engineer to vector us back to the runway as he looked out into the darkness without the “benefit” of goggles. “Come right. Roll out. Left, steady.” Our hearts weren’t in it though, so after 15 more minutes, we landed, and one at a time, pulled the goggles off. We went home without them, much to everyone’s relief.

  The next time we went NVG flying the conditions were better, with more moonlight and a darker airfield. Even the “cream of the crop” needed a moon with the first generation of goggles, especially when the goggles were full face, and not the “cut aways” that soon were developed and fielded.

  Those first generation NVGs were the very same ones that the pilots were using at Desert One when the mH-53 hit the C-130 in the Iranian desert on 24 April 1980.

  Sometimes it seems like luck and superstition does not always work, but for me they did on my first NVG flight. Luck and superstition were still with me on my last NVG flight in 1988 too, but that is another story.

  18

  MARINE CORPS NIGHT FLIGHT

  USS GUAM ■ JUNE 1979

  The noise and red-lit instruments are nearly overpowering to your racing mind. The world seems upright but you just can’t tell by the feeling in your ass when the world consists entirely of the red glow in the cockpit and blackness outside the windows. You could be slicing toward the sea in a hard bank or going backwards or both. Or, everything could be as it was supposed to be, the aircraft level at 300 feet above the sea and holding the proper speed.

  Outside the cockpit, the world is completely black, as black as if someone had thrown black paint over the windshield and your eyes were closed and you are screaming to yourself, “Oh God, I don’t want to be here! Let me be somewhere else, anywhere, don’t make me try to control this helicopter, let someone else do it because I can’t, I just fucking can’t tell up from down, right from left, the sea from the sky, the noise sounds like the helicopter is going to tear itself apart in the turn, Oh God,” but you say none of these things. You only stare at the familiar mass of instruments on the dash and fight the panic within. The rest of the aircrew has no idea what is going on in your head as you try to remain in control, except every one of them has felt, or is right now feeling, the same feelings. Maybe they feel them this time or maybe they don’t, but no one says anything and the helicopter moves in the darkness toward another landing on the ship.

  * * *

  All li
ving ships have a hum that never stops. But, just like city noise, when you live aboard, you don’t really hear it, especially during the day; only at night when the other noises are quiet, you discover that it is there. All Navy ships also lean slightly to one side or the other. The USS Guam listed a couple degrees to starboard but unless you thought about it, you never noticed after you had been on board for a while. Like a pain you have had for years, you don’t really feel it any more even if it is always there. We swore the Guam was the worst of ships and made up acronyms to match the letters G U A M. “Go UA (unauthorized absence) man.” “Give Up And masturbate.” though truth be told, in retrospect, the Guam was a pretty good ship to live aboard and to fly from.

  At sea, we speak in code, or actually shorthand, much like the verbal shorthand we use internally among the crew when talking over the radio. Altitudes below 1000 feet are broken down in 100-foot increments called “cherubs”—cherubs three would be 300 feet. One thousand feet and above are called “Angels.” the radio frequencies are color coded, i.e., red for the tower, purple for Center. The actual frequencies may change but the colors remain the same. The ship is “mother.” the TACAN, the radio beacon carried by larger ships, is “our Father.” the ship’s course is “BRC,” short for Base Recover Course. “Buster” means go as fast as you can, and “Pigeons” means the course from the aircraft to its destination. The most important is “State,” how much fuel you have left. State is given in “time to splash,” self-explanatory (most pilots subtract a little time as a “fudge factor,” say five minutes for the wife, and another five for each child). “Souls” are the number of personnel onboard the aircraft.

  The men who work on the deck of a ship also dress in different colored flotation vests, called “shirts” even though they are really vests and matching color “cranials,” a protective helmet with built-in sound attenuator cups to protect their hearing. The numerous varieties of shirts allow everyone to see at a glance what a particular person’s role is. The yellow-shirted landing signal enlisted (LSE) stands in front of the deck spot where the helicopter is to land and gives hand signals to direct the pilot over the three painted squares where the helicopter’s wheels are to go. The LSE also directs the blue-shirted aircraft deck handlers who install/remove the chocks and chains to keep the aircraft from rolling on a moving deck. The men who refuel aircraft wear purple shirts. Medical personnel wear white vests with red crosses on them, while cargo handlers and the men who lead passengers to their helicopter wear plain white shirts. Squadron maintenance personnel wear green shirts. No one ever goes out onto the flight deck during Flight Operations without a cranial and vest, no one.

  My squadron had joined the ship a week before as part of a marine expeditionary Unit, a MEU—pronounced “mew”—that would provide the landing force for the Sixth Fleet (LF6F) in the Mediterranean for the next six months. Our on-load off the coast of Beauford, North Carolina, was the usual controlled chaos and the usual success. Tonight is the first night that the weather has been even marginally within limits for the practice of night landings or Carrier Qualifications—CQs—required if the squadron is to remain combat-ready.

  The aircraft we flew out to the Guam all had official names, military names like, the CH-46e “Sea Knight” or the AH-1t “Sea Cobra” or the CH-53D “Sea Stallion.” the “Sea” part identified them as Naval, or in this case marine Corps, aircraft. But, as always their crews called them less lovely, less aggressive names.

  The CH-53D Sea Stallion is the “Shitter,” shortened from “Shuddering Shithouse,” in honor of the normal high level of vibration the bird produced when hovering, taking off, and landing. But the crews often just called it a “Hog,” because close in to the deck, fighting the wind bouncing off the island and up over the flight deck it wallows like a hog might do in the mud. Once, a CH-53 wallowed badly enough when attempting to do a normal landing on board the Guam, that the pilot hit the scupper (drain channel around the flight deck) with one of his main landing gear wheels hard enough to put a major dent in the scupper’s steel wall.

  The AH-1t Sea Cobra is a “Snake” to its crews, slim and deadly, but wobbly over the flight deck spot and top heavy for its narrow skids. The missions of Cobra pilots does not involve the constant landings and take-offs that cargo pilots do, so they are sometimes not as proficient. The cargo pilots love to critique the Cobra pilots’ landings, particularly when we are flying out of a landing zone in the middle of nowhere.

  The CH-46e Sea Knight is a “Frog” or “Phrog” to its crews and nearly everyone else. Sitting on its wheels it seems to be squatting, and when it ground taxies it looks like it is awkwardly trying to hop to the runway. The Frog is not lovely to anyone except its crew.

  The UH-1N is just another Huey. All models of the UH-1 series have been called “Hueys” since the original Army models were delivered with “HU-1” for “helicopter utility model 1” stamped on their rudder pedals. The Huey is the most produced helicopter the United States has built and comes in many models. I flew the A, B, C, D, e, H, K, L, and m models, all single-engine versions.

  My marine composite squadron that embarked on the Guam had 12 Phrogs, four Snakes, Four Shitters, and two Hueys, a normal mix for an MEU. The crews that flew the aircraft ranged from twenty-four-year-old lieutenants to the “old man,” the lieutenant colonel commanding officer at forty-four.

  Just forward of the gray steel wall of the “island,” that part of the ship that sticks up above the flight deck on the starboard (right) side, on the 02 level (the level just below the flight deck), the crews gathered for their briefings and debriefings in ready room 2. The lights in the ship’s ready room 2 were supposed to be red during Night Ops so that the pilots’ eyes would have time to night adapt. But on the Guam, half of the lights were out and some of those that were working put out more white than red so the effect was not what was intended. It was just shabby, not like a place where men prepared to go night flying or to combat. In the front of the ready room, the red lights did not work at all so the operations duty officer (ODO) had the whites on so he could see to do his paperwork.

  The ready room briefing chairs were covered in gray vinyl and very heavily padded, so that in theory at least, you could wait in comfort for the next mission. They were also like school desks from many years ago, except the chairs had gray metal frames instead of light colored wood and the swing-over side arms were metal too. No way to carve your name into them, but the paint was always missing in places, making them worn looking. When the reclining mechanism worked, the chairs could lean back at a comfortable angle, again so the crews could relax while awaiting their launches, ready to scramble to face the incoming enemy. But like the red-dark adaptation lights, some chairs worked and some didn’t.

  There were two ready rooms side by side on the 02 (Oh two) deck, one used by the aircrews and the other by maintenance. Nine rows of eight chairs each with an aisle down the middle determined the seating capacity of the ready rooms. The one used by the aircrew was toward the stern of the ship. In the front of the ready room, toward the center of the ship, was the ODO desk with two telephones, and behind him were the boards, some Plexiglas-covered aluminum sheets, others chalk boards. The boards slid out, one after another to show weather, radio frequencies, aircrews and the aircraft they would fly, and other bits of information the pilots would need for tonight’s mission. In front, on the wall near the ceiling, was the 1mC, the ship’s loudspeaker system, and the five position speaker that was the ship’s entertainment system.

  The briefing for night CQs was done at the time listed on the flight schedule, as were the morning briefing and the afternoon briefing. The aircrews did their Naval Air training and Operating Procedures Standardization Program (NATOPS—sometimes referred to by more senior aviators as “Not Applicable to Old Pilots”) briefs, and the first crews went up to the twilight to preflight their aircraft. The entire night CQ briefing process had the air of a Roman Catholic mass; the normal relaxed atmosphere of a dayt
ime mission brief was not there, not for a dark night launch like tonight. The rituals that must be obeyed are the same whether day or night, but the rituals are more solemn at night. At night, they are more than pro forma. Checklists are recited like church hymns learned long ago, and like the hymns, the words the checklist called for were said only by rote, with nearly all meaning gone. And if the pilots did not follow their ritual, they would feel guilty, perhaps without even knowing why. But that did not happen at night, not in the middle of the Atlantic, on a hazy night with moderate visibility and fairly strong winds. This is too real for rote.

  Following the prayers in the brief, the crews moved out onto the deck for the second ritual, preflighting the aircraft. Each aircraft panel would be opened, connections tugged on, bearings checked, oil and hydraulic levels checked, and so on until the pilots had checked the entire aircraft. Unlike fixed wing pilots who mostly just walk around to see if the panels are closed, helo crews check and re-check everything, even after the crew chief has checked it all before in even greater detail and signed the bird ready to fly. Helicopters do not have ejection seats and the crew does not have parachutes. Not that they would open anyway since helicopters almost never fly high enough for a parachute to work, so where the helicopter goes, also goes the crew…

  On the Phrog, the HAC always does the bottom and inside of the aircraft while the copilot does the top. The HAC shines his flashlight into those places nearly invisible in the dim light that a fading day leaves inside the helicopter. Outside, he dodges the chains as he walks around the air-craft clockwise, from the crew door aft, checking the landing gear and fuel tanks and lower parts of the aircraft.

  The aluminum helicopter skins are nearly always slick from spilled oil, hydraulic fluid, salt spray, and spots on top of the fuselage are worn shinny from the feet of the crew chiefs and maintenance personnel. Checking the top means the copilot must climb the side of the helicopter using the small, oily foot wells, to the top of the aft pylon, crossing his legs over each other until he is 18 feet above the steel deck. Because the aircraft are parked in the “bone” (the area where aircraft are parked on the deck between flights), with their sterns hanging out past the edge of the deck, the copilot is now 70 feet above the dark sea. Fading light and high winds add a difficulty factor and make it more interesting. After all the appropriate things are examined, pulled, tugged, etc., the panels would be closed up by the crew chief, whose movements are much more smooth than the pilots, with a grace developed from countless trips. Then the crew chief, using a stubby screwdriver, closes the deus fasteners (the large headed screws), securing the panels.