In five minutes we were there, closing at 130 plus knots airspeed. From 500 feet above the ground and several miles away, I could see what had happened. The top-most power line was down where the lines crossed the river, one end dangling in the water and the other still attached to its tower on each side.
“Go on back to base and refuel. Stand by on the ground and I’ll call if I want you back here,” the CO called over the radio to the other Phrog.
As the other aircraft pulled away, I circled the crash site on a high reconnaissance to pick out a landing spot before beginning an approach. I learned long ago at Fort Wolters how to land in unfamiliar LZS. The proper procedure for landing in uncleared sites is first to do a high recon to get an overview of the area and potential obstacles, followed by a low recon to a wave off, to see if there is anything you missed from higher above. After that, you did a full approach to landing. I was not going to shortcut the procedure, not this time.
From the high recon, 500 feet above the site, I could see below me what remained of the Cobra. The main portion of the fuselage was in the middle of the river. Neither the tail nor the rotor blades was visible. The water looked about chest deep, judging from all the men splashing in it around the wreckage. Apparently they were trying to get the pilots out. Picking a clear spot well back from the crash site, I landed on the western bank with my aircraft facing the wreckage in the river. As our wheels touched, the CO was unstrapping, and as I lowered the collective, he was on his way out of the cockpit. through the chin bubble, I could see a piece of green metal, oblong and about six inches long, probably a part of the Cobra’s skin, under us. I thought to myself that for it to be this far from the wreckage, he must have really been traveling fast when he hit the wire. Looking back through the companionway, I waved my copilot into the seat the CO had just vacated.
* * *
This one was more difficult to handle than most crashes. The senior pilot on-board the crash aircraft, a captain, was not a Cobra pilot. He was a CH-MKD pilot taking a “dollar ride” in a Cobra, a tourist on that soft spring Greek day.
One year before, in March IQOP, the captain had been copilot on a CH-53D during another exercise, this one in Spain, again on an LFNF. As it happened, the CH-53D’s mission that spring Spanish afternoon had been to pick me and two other Marines up to take us out for an “escape and evasion” (E&E) training mission.
For training purposes, our CH-46F had been “shot down” over hostile territory and we were escaping back to friendly lines. The training was not really for us but for the Navy SEALs (a group of uniquely trained and equipped Navy special operations personnel who operate from, around and in maritime areas—Sea, Air, and Land) who would be picking us up and bringing us back to the ship by rubber boat in the dark. We would find our way to a rendezvous point, leave a pile of rocks stacked in a certain manner for the SEALs to find. They would come to us and basically take us prisoner. After asking a series of questions, taken from our files to make sure we were who we were supposed to be, they would lead us to the boats and take us back out to our ship. This exercise would be quite different from when I was actually shot down in enemy territory in 1971. That time, my crew and I sat behind the aircraft’s M60D machine guns until a Huey came to get us.
Right after breakfast, we caught a helicopter from the ship to the squadron’s base camp LZ down in a valley on the edge of the exercise operations area. We spent the morning discussing what we were going to do as we worked our way across the five or so miles of Spanish desert to the pickup zone (PZ). The mission was supposed to start at IMHH hours but by IKHH hours I was bored with just sitting in the LZ and was ready to get started. The SEAL that was our lane grader (evaluator) was bored too and readily agreed that we might as well get started, so instead of waiting for the CH-53D that was going to fly us out to the “crash” site, I got on the ODO’s fox mike and called down a passing CH-46F that was only too willing to take us the ten miles to where we would start.
We arrived on a dusty Spanish hilltop in short order and ran from the aircraft to begin our “escape.” It was a beautiful, warm, but not hot, spring afternoon. We were feeling good and playing the game as best we could, that is with a little humor thrown in. Since we were close to where the “Spaghetti Westerns” had been filmed, we decided to use the theme from the movie, the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as a challenge and response call—the challenge, “Doddle-duddle-do,” the response “Dah-Do-Do.” We did our best to sneak across the Spanish desert but after only about KH minutes, as we rounded a hillside, a woman came out of a house just below us. She had a bag over her shoulder and started walking toward a tied-up mule in front of her adobe house. She must have seen us, because though she did not look directly at the armed, uniformed men trying to hide in the thin brush on the hillside above her, she froze for a minute. Then, moving casually, oh, so casually, she strolled over to the mule, untied it and climbed nimbly into the saddle. As soon as she was settled in, she spurred that mule into what passes for a mule gallop and disappeared down the road in a cloud of dust. Even the SEAL joined us as we all just sat down on the dusty hillside, convulsed with laughter.
After that, we moved as unobtrusively as we could to our rendezvous point, seeing no one else on the way. After four hours, we arrived at twilight to find a platoon of Marine grunts sitting right where we were supposed to leave the stack of rocks for the rescuing SEALs to find. Our SEAL left us in hiding and went to find out what the grunts were up to. He returned about ten minutes later.
“Why would a CH-53D spin around in circles and throw things out the back?” he asked.
My reply was, “Exercise over,” as we three “escapees” and the SEAL ran as hard as we could toward the grunt’s camp.
When I came over the small hill between us and the grunts, I could see the 53 on the ground, still looking like a CH-53D, but with a major airframe change. Instead of being JM feet or so high, the top of the rotor hub was only about eight feet off the ground. All the rotor blades and the tail rotor blades were still on the upright aircraft but the fuselage was crushed, smashed down. The two main landing gear struts were driven up completely through the structure. One or both fuel tanks had ruptured, leaving the smell of jet fuel heavy in the air, but thankfully, the fuel had not ignited. Inside the CH-53D there were four dead men, crushed by the transmission coming down inside the cabin, but five men had survived, three in the cabin, and both pilots.
The CH-53D was supposed to pick us up for the E&E exercise. Since we weren’t there when the aircraft landed, the HAC picked up some backpacks to carry out to the waiting infantrymen instead. Several Marines that had been guarding the packs climbed onboard too. After flying the short distance to the LZ, the pilots brought the 53 into a 100-foot hover to select a good landing spot. Just as they arrived in the hover, the crew chief opened the rear ramp hatch to see the LZ better. As he did, the hatch actuator broke through its mount on the inside of the helicopter’s roof and went into the tail rotor drive shaft. The actuator acted like a lathe and cut the shaft in two, resulting in total loss of tail rotor thrust. Without the tail rotor to counteract the torque created by the main rotor in a hover, the aircraft went into a violent flat spin in the opposite direction of the turning main rotor.
If you are in forward flight and lose tail rotor thrust, the aircraft speed may keep the fuselage streamlined enough to allow the pilots to do a high-speed running landing like a fixed-wing normally does. In a hover, complete recovery from loss of tail rotor thrust is nearly impossible. You are quite probably going to crash. The only question is how. Will the pilot be able to maintain some control or is he just a passenger until impact? The only real option the pilot has to maintain at least minimal control is to remove the torque from the aircraft by shutting down the engines. One of the pilots did exactly that as the 53 began its violent spin. Even though the aircraft was spinning at a terrifying rate, one of the pilots managed to reach the engine controls and shut both engines off. As he did so, the spin stoppe
d, but now they were falling straight down, straight down from 100 feet.
Had one of the pilots not shut down the engine, it is very unlikely that anyone would have survived. The CH-53D would have hit the ground out of control and the operating turbine engines would probably have ignited the fuel from the ruptured tanks, creating a giant fireball and leaving only shards of blackened, melted aluminum.
Both pilots survived the impact of the 100-foot fall, their seats absorbing some of the force. Both were unconscious and badly hurt, but alive, as were three of the men in the main cabin. The other four in the cabin were dead, some from the impact, some crushed by the transmission as it came down.
After medevac from Spain to Germany and treatment at the big hospital at Frankfort, both the pilots were well enough to return to duty several months later. The major and the aircraft commander moved on to another assignment. The first lieutenant copilot was promoted to captain and returned to the squadron in time for our next LF6F. One year after the crash in Spain he was in the front seat of the Cobra, taking an orientation flight, a “dollar ride,” that soft Greek spring day. There was no surviving this one.
We were supposed to be in the back of that aircraft, but because I had been bored waiting for it, we were not. Luck and superstition?
* * *
For the longest time, we sat there on the banks of that Greek river, engines burning and rotors turning, watching the small crowd of men in the river working with what was left of the Cobra. After a while, I saw some of them bring something to the shore and then return for another load. We were too far away to see exactly what it was, but that wasn’t necessary. I knew. After wrapping the loads they carried ashore in ponchos or some similar material, they lifted both bundles onto waiting stretchers and started carrying them toward my helicopter.
“Corporal,” I called over the ICS, but I didn’t have to. He was watching and had already begun folding up some troop seats and stowing them against the side of the cabin so that we could put the stretchers inside. I watched him in the cockpit rear view mirror as he made the cabin ready for the remains of our squadron mates.
I continued watching in the mirror as the stretchers and their loads were carried up the ramp and strapped down. everyone except the CO got back off the aircraft and stood just outside the rotor disk looking back at us. The CO climbed back in through the ramp but he strapped into one of troop seats in the back instead of coming up to the cockpit. The crew chief offered him a long cord to hookup to the ICS but he didn’t take it. He just looked forward, toward the cockpit, and without really looking, sadly gave a thumbs up to signal that he was ready to go. “All set in back,” the crew chief called over the ICS. The copilot and I completed the checklist, turned three on, and lifting directly into forward flight without a hover check, I climbed the aircraft up from the riverbank and turned toward the sea and our ship. Just before crossing the shore, we did our “feet wet” checklist, nose wheel and brakes locked, and headed to the ship, three miles out to sea.
“Center, 04, feet wet inbound, four souls onboard, one point oh to splash, two routine medevac,” I called over the control center radio channel, “Purple” in ship speak.
“Roger 04,” Center replied, “Cherubs three, your signal Charley. What assistance do you need? Say state of medevacs. How many corpsmen do you need?” all came out in a rush.
“Center, 04, two routine medevac. Require four stretcher bearers,” I replied.
“04, Center. Say state of medevac,” Center said again, more urgently this time.
In Vietnam what I was doing had been a normal course of events for those of us who flew the helicopters—men died every day and every day helicopters brought them into the hospital, but the peacetime Navy was not used to wartime radio calls, and for a moment I lost it.
“Center, 04. Both men are dead. this is a routine medevac. All I need are the stretcher bearers. Do you understand?” I shouted into the mic.
For a long moment there was silence. Then Center said, “Roger, 04. Switch tower when ready.”
My copilot changed the radio frequency as I headed down the starboard side in a normal approach pattern. When I passed just ahead of the ship, I turned across the bow, maintaining my 300 feet, to roll out on the course opposite of the ship’s course. When I called “abeam,” Tower cleared us to land spot 4. I rolled smoothly into a bank, turning the helicopter to 45 degrees off the ship’s course and reducing power to descend. As the helicopter crossed the deck edge, I saw the men that would carry the two body bags below, standing by the island in their white float vests with the red cross on them, waiting. I came in without stopping in a hover to position over the landing spot. Instead, I landed the helicopter immediately on spot 4, with the wheels exactly in the three boxes marking the proper position. I did it to the best of my ability, to give them, my squadron mates, their last ship landing as smoothly and as close to perfect as I could.
Once on deck, I waited while my copilot turned three off and the green-shirted deck handlers installed the chocks and chains. I looked back into the cabin through the rear view mirror and watched the men lift the two stretchers and move down the ramp. I did not watch them as they carried their loads to the starboard elevator to go below to the ship’s hospital and on to the morgue. I gave the “drinking” hand signal for refueling to the yellow-shirted LSE. He signaled for the purple-shirted refuelers and my copilot and I sat without talking while they pumped the fuel into the tanks. When it was complete, I signaled for takeoff. At the yellow shirt’s signal, the blue shirts ran under the rotor disk, pulled the chalks, and removed the three chains holding my 46 to the deck. They ran back out and held them for me to count so I would know all restraints were removed from the aircraft.
Chocks and chains off, the copilot turned three on, and after a “ready aft” from the crew chief, I lifted the helicopter into a hover at the LSE’s signal. my copilot called “gauges good to go” and I slid left as I added power and lowered the nose, we crossed the deck edge climbing and gathering speed and we were on our way back to our base camp on the beach. The death of two comrades and the loss of an aircraft does not end your mission.
Every flight requires you go into a room in your mind where there is nothing but the mission you have been assigned, nothing but flying. When you enter, you must close the door to that room behind you, shutting out everything else and look at nothing but the flight in front of you. Fail to do so and you may join the lost aircrew in death.
I closed the door to the room they died in, stepped into the one for flying, and my mission continued. The mission must be done. Always.
20
EXTERNALS
CAMP LEJEUNE, NORTH CAROLINA ■ MAY 1980
Very, very few people are natural pilots. Most people who become pilots learn slowly and while they are learning, they are very, very dangerous to everyone else because they are inept. But even more dangerous than normal slow learners, are the few that are “naturals,” the ones born to fly. They are more dangerous because they sometimes come without the fear of death. They have to be taught that their abilities will not save them if they take the aircraft too far or think their skill will get them out of a situation that no one can resolve.
M CAS New River, as are all Marine Corps Air Stations, is named for a local feature. Some are named for a town—MCAS Beaufort and MCAS Yuma come to mind. Some are named for geographic features, like MCAS Cherry Point named after a point of land on the Neuse River. MCAS New River is named for the New River, the brown, yellow, muddy feature that separates the base from Camp Lejeune. The New River is a bit unusual since it begins and ends in Onslow County, North Carolina, starting as a black water creek in a swamp that becomes an alligator swamp until it changes downstream into a wide, very shallow river that passes on the south side of the air field. The Marine Corps’ east Coast training Squadron for cargo helicopters, HMT-204, is located at MCAS New River.
HMT is marine for “Helicopter Marine Training,” as opposed to “Hmm,” H
elicopter Marine Medium, the name of all tactical CH-46 squadrons. HMT-204 provided training for both the CH-46 and the CH-53D. The squadron’s aircraft were all parked at the east end of New River’s concrete ramp, arranged in neat rows by aircraft type, the more numerous CH-46’s here and the CH-53’s there. Flight Operations at HMT-204 normally consisted of two day launches, one in the morning and one in the afternoon during the week. There were three types of flights: student training flights, instructor training flights, and maintenance check flights. Night training flights went out two or three times a week. If the student throughput load was light, the squadron took the weekend off.
Instructors in HMT-204 were generally cruised-out captains finishing out their first Fleet Marine Corps tour, meaning they were assigned there from the deploying squadrons after completing two six-month LF6F deployments. They would be instructors for, at most, a year before they went off to Amphibious Warfare School or headquarters duty or some other non-Fleet assignment. even now, Fleet tours are the only ones that are really important to a Marine. Why would you want to be a Marine if you weren’t in the “Fleet,” where real Marine things are done? My HMT-204 tour would be longer than most since I got there much faster than usual, and I completed the Marine Corps’ aviation training program sooner than a typical pilot due to my prior aviation service with the Army. It doesn’t take nearly as long to train a pilot who already knows how to fly, so I got to the Fleet as a second lieutenant and finished my two med cruises much sooner than typical.
Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond Page 22