Going to put up the first and second of 18 chapters of the story of two years of my life that began in 1968 at Jacksonville, Fl. It doesn't come out of the gate snortin', but maybe it gets there after a bit. Anywhere along the way, you get tired of it just say so and I'll pull the plug. Someone was asking the other day here at the 'Fire about important decisions in people's lives. This was one of mine.
Not published, unlikely to ever happen.
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Rotorheads Rule!
Chapter 1
I was born into aviation. Dad was an Air Force crew chief, big iron carry over from the Big One, and later, Korea. One of Curt LeMay�s boys. Later on he was appointed as a Warrant in the late 50�s and served as a Wing Maintenance Officer in a variety of MAC and TAC units, ending his career in Korat, Thailand in �71 while I was off making mothers out of whores in Nam. Point of all that is while he worked on the planes, I got to watch them crash (a lot) and fly patterns, and sometimes he let my brother and me cavort around the inside of such monstrosities as the C-124 and B-50. I thought the B-50 was cool, especially the dolly the tail gunner used to get back to his office. They always say how cramped it is back there. Ain�t true. Both me and my brother fit just fine at the same time.
Times passed and while on Guam my friends and I would go down to the Terminal to check out the new chicks when they showed up on rotation. Colonel�s daughters were usually the hottest of the lot, but some of the others weren�t so bad either. The flights came in every Tuesday. Along with that, we saw the other contract flights, usually DC-8s, which carried these dudes with funny hats and odd guns to Nam. They always looked weary and bored. I thought it very incongruent, all things considered. This was in 1964-65 and about that time dad brought home a training film about guerilla warfare and counter ambush strategy. It left a mark on me and I always felt weird about those fellows heading �over there� after that. One of our more enlightened teachers at school discussed Vietnam a lot in class, tried to get us into the reality of it all. We didn�t have much of an idea what was going on, except a lot of guys were heading that way.
We came back to the States the day they had their first publicized B-52 raid on Nam. The departure operations took about 45 minutes and woke everybody up on the base. As I recall they used a MITO launch with 57 bombers, all packed with about 60K # of bombs. Three of them were lost on the mission, two in a midair and I don�t recall the other. Wing Commander was on one of the two that collided, somewhere over the Philippine Sea.
High School came and went, college began. Hey, like dudes, I was lost in surfing and surfer girls, the Beachboys, the Stones and you know, school just didn�t work for me. Halfway thru the second term I knew I was not cutting the mustard so I began looking for a job. One that would keep my sorry ass out of ambushes. I explored the NavCat program but just as I enquired they raised the requirement to a 4 year degree. Pizz on that! Next I went down to the Army recruiter and looked into the Warrant Officer Flight Program. I took some tests, did well enough and the recruiter said to hang loose while he arranged for a class date. I said nothing to my parents about this. I told the recruiter about my lagging grades and he said, �If you get a little brown envelope in the mail that looks like this,� waving a little brown envelope in the air, �don�t open it. Bring it to me.�
I got my little brown envelope in the same week I got my class date, about 2 months hence. I went home one day and got my hair buzzed cut. It felt weird surfing like that. My friends thought I�d lost my marbles and my parents concurred. While they were confronting me about such dastardly acts I let them know it would work well in my future for I had joined the Army. I think Mom about wet her pants. Then I told them I was going into the WOC Flight Program and I thought Dad was going to pop a few buttons on his shirt.
I was inducted in Jacksonville, Fl. on the 19th of February 1968, while the TET Offensive raged. Typically, my timing sucked in a strategic sense. Tactically, I was #1 in the class on knowing when to duck, but this was a latent skill not realized for over a year. Two weeks later the Navy went back to the 2 year college requirement for aviation cadets�..
Chapter 2
There is nothing worth repeating about boot camp in Feb/Mar at Ft. Polk, La. It is a dreary place of little merit. I saw it snow, rain and reach 70* plus in one day. I saw our bivouac rained out and that is an odd concept to me. Like they're going to call a rain day in a war? Well, actually they do, but I'll get to that later.
After finishing boot the 7 of us destined to flight school were taken to buses and shipped to Ft. Wolters, Tx. Just outside Mineral Wells, which is just outside of Ft. Worth. I was processed in with the rest and within 2 days found out I'd been set back a month due to class size limits and it is the last I saw of my cohorts. I was labeled a "snowbird", meaning we got to do meaningless chores and eat 3 squares a day with minimal supervision. It was the time of "The Graduate" and Mrs. Robinson was big on the radio those days. I have no idea why but I found the entire scenario depressing to the tens. Idle minds etc.....I teamed up with a guy named Larry and we soon had a general handle on affairs. There were 5 TAC Officers in charge of general education of WOC's, (What do you throw at a Wabbit? A WOC of course); There was The Glove and The Gimp...they stick in my memory the most. As most TAC Officers were, they were Warrants that had been slightly mangled in the process of getting shot down or some such and were grounded. Ergo, they got to fug with us at leisure. Not just us, but any WOC within a couple of time zones. And they were Masters of the Fug, believe you me. Y'all probably heard some of this before, but it's all true. Their forte' was in the asking of questions for which there is no good answer. Like, "Are you looking at me Candidate?!!!", this at a scream 3" from your nose. "Sir, no sir!", voice quavering. "Why not candidate, is there something better to look at around here?!!! You think your girlfriend is coming to see you Candidate?!!!" "Sir, no sir!" "You got that right maggot! Drop and give me 20!!!"
Well, there were "solutions" to such affairs. One was called the "Medevac". If a TAC was on a single WOC for sport, ie, not in formation, we could pull off our dog tags, swing them over our head and yell Medevac! while we swooped in and physically picked up the victim and ran off with him to safety. There was also the contrived military letter explaining why you should be granted a weekend pass to go into Ft. Worth. Me and Larry got away with that once. It took a week for my headache to clear up after that, but I still have fond recollections of the Ft.Worth/Dallas area as a result. Oh, and TCU. There's a lot of pretty girls there.
The month passed and I found myself assigned to the 6th WOC Company. A week of preflight orientation and classroom studies began and on day one I found out I'd be flying the OH-23D made by Hiller. Other platoons flew the OH-13, or Bell 47 to you civilian types. Most flew the TH-55 made by Hughes Tool Co., later Hughes Aerospace. Those of us flying "real" helicopters from the Korean War era called the -55 the Mattel Messerschmitt. Were a tiny little thing and most likely to kill you amongst the three types of choppers used in primary training. It actually uses v-belts to drive the main rotor and was proscribed from flight in rain as it had a fiberglass tail rotor that turned at about Mach .9. Bad Combo.
The TH-55 had an articulated rotor system and because of that could enter a state of ground resonance at certain rpm ranges. It was funny to watch...they would literally eat themselves in about 6 seconds. Hysterical stuff. Well, I didn't care much for them and still don't. While we were in school there a tornado visited the heliport where they were based and swept about a hundred of them up like grasshoppers and stacked 'em up against a perimeter fence.
So, comes day one on the flight line. I met my instructor, a civilian named Joe Burkett. Hell of a guy in retrospect, and very capable in that profession. We went out to the flight line, he walked me through a preflight inspection, preflight checklist and then start up. Talk about an alien world....Jesus H. Christ....the noise, the sudden boom of his voice in the helmet, vibrations, needles flippin' this way and that.... Joe sez, "OK, we go now." It stuck in my mind as a curious thing to say....a year later I'd find out where it came from.
I was looking between by boots thru the chin bubble and after the collective lever to my left began to move upward, so did we! I was watching the earth shrink away between my feet...my first take off in a chopper....all the way up to about 3'. Damn, there I was with the eagles and stuff! Joe started talking to the tower and we hoovered over to a pad where everybody took off from. When he wasn't busy with the tower he talked to me thru the intercom. He asked me to change frequencies on the radio, a 10 channel coffee grinder set that used a tone to tell you when you were "there". I just knew this was going to be a snap, I mean, chitt(ok), I was already master of the radio! HA!
We were cleared to commit aviation and Ol' Joe pushed the stick forward a bit and we began to motivate. I thought we were going to trip 'cause there weren't nothing in front of me but dirt, or so it seemed at the time. Somewhere at about 15 knots the whole chopper shuddered briefly then we started to climb into the hot Texas sky. That shudder thing is typical of all chopper departures and it occurs when the rotor system leaves the circulation of turbulent air previously created and enters into "clean" undisturbed air. It's called translational lift and is a much more efficient regime. There are about 12 million stories about that little facet in the world of rotorheads, I'll tell a few along the way myself.
We climbed up to about 1,500' and headed out past Possum Kingdom Lake to a stage field. What's a Stage Field? What's a TH-55 etc? Well, pictures are worth a 1,000 words.
http://members.tripod.com/airfields_freeman/TX/Airfields_TX_Abilene_E.htmI have no idea where we went that day. A stage field. If you follow the link above and scroll down to pictures of what is left of various stage fields in the region you'll see one referenced as Stage Field #1. That is where I would solo on 5 July 1968.
We shot an approach to one of the lanes and came to a hover over one of the concrete pads at the far end. Joe hoovered on into the grass infield and began the humorous process of teaching an idiot to hover. First I got to control the heading with pedals, then the up and down with the collective and throttle, and finally, where we was with the cyclic. Emphasis on "where we was", because I didn't linger in any particular spot for long. Where it gets funny is when one tries to integrate all the controls at once. It is counter intuitive to use the pedals for directional control, instinct demanding that you use the cyclic stick for that and forget about the pedals. Don't work that way, and that's why there was about 15 Hillers out in the grass doin' this really bizarre waltz, drifting sideways, yawing in all directions and generally making the jack rabbits pizz themselves with laughter. It was a totally humiliating experience! All said, it lasted about 30 minutes before Joe hovered over to the parking ramp, kicked me out and told me to send the next victim his way. I found my stick buddy in the bleachers...the guys were rolling around laughing too...and sent him to see Joe. I only got to watch this circus for about 15 minutes before all the students had swapped out and it was time to board the bus and head back to Wolters. We were, to a man, euphoric and humble at the same time. None of us had mastered the hover button but we were damn sure going to stay after it!
We loaded up and took the bus ride home thru the Texas Hill Country. Guys, I gotta say it is, or at least was, one of God's favorite spots. In time the Brazos River and rolling hills would become familiar and shame on me for not going back to that part of the world. Gorgeous place. The bus ride was about an hour, our buddies were in the barracks by the time we returned. Chow time for us....and the TACs. It was their favorite time of day, and probably ours too. In a rare fit of benevolence, the Army fed its flyboys well. Far better than in boot camp. Of course the TACs had already eaten dinner. Their feast was....us. I mentioned The Glove earlier if you'll recall. His name was Kittle. Every time we saw him it was SOP......"Hey diddle diddle, good morning/afternoon/evening Mr. Kittle!" We got to drop regardless but I think he enjoyed it as much as we did.
You know what? We got thru it all. Most of us did. They told us there would be 40% attrition rate and they met that goal, almost entirely at Ft. Wolters.
I'm not going to belabor the experience a lot, for flight school is what it is, no more, no less. I will touch on some high points though:
1. It is entirely possible that the post laundry could have put enough starch in our khakis and fatigues to make them viable rotor blades. 1 demerit for having wings in your pants, or more properly, failing to break the bond in your creases.
2. In that day and place, the appearance of a Huey on the flight line was tantamount to the Second Coming of Christ. Little boys would soil their flight suits if a Cobra showed up.
3. Regardless of the quality of your spit shine, or how many coats of Mop 'n Glow you swabbed on the toes, shoe wax will melt during a Saturday morning parade in the months of June, July and August in that region of Texas.
4. In the same venue, it is possible for surrounding flag bearers to support an interior flag bearer upright, even though he has passed out cold from the heat. The exterior guys were SOL and usually went face down in the dirt.
5. We did indeed fill Mr. Kittle's office with balloons on the evening of our last day there. We also turned his desk around but repositioned the blotter etc. so it would not appear so. Well, except for the 500# sandstone rock we put on the desk. That sorta stood out after all the balloons got popped. It was when he saw the rock that he swore for the first time in recorded history. The second was when he tried to sit at his desk. He put us at rigid attention and inquired if we thought that was funny. Without prior coordination we replied, "Sir, Yes Sir!" That's when we saw him smile for the first time.
6. A fellow confused the detents on his intercom/radio switch one day and thinking he was talking to his stick buddy rather than the radio said, "I'm really [bleep] up! I'm flying over Possum Kingdom Lake" (Restricted Area).
The tower said "Helicopter over Possum Kingdom Lake, say call sign." He replied "I'm not that [bleep] up."
7. 5 students flying the TH-55 died during my stay at Ft. Wolters. None were from my class. One instructor went down too.
8. I almost bought a cherry Austin Healy 3000 just before I graduated. Wish I had, glad I didn't.
9. I got western drunk 3 times in Ft. Worth that summer. God bless Ft. Worth!
10. There was an instructor who carried a bull whip and was known to frequently hit students on the helmet with it during training flights. He was also known to direct students to fly low level over a lake in the area then chop the throttle on them to simulate an engine failure. One WOC refused to comply with his instructions one day and things got a little grim in the cockpit. Finally, the student did as directed and when the instructor chopped the power the student reached up and turned off the mags. The instructor was fired, the student's flight training terminated and the chopper was a total loss.
11. My solo flight was one of the most exhilarating things I've done. One of the most disconcerting as well. During my 2nd pattern a CH-34 entered traffic and totally fugged me up. I survived despite the distraction...somehow. I somehow missed the dunk in the Holiday Inn pool in Mineral Wells that day. Not long after I left Wolters a student drowned in the pool and the ritual was forever banned. I was the first in the class to solo. I had a hangover. Yes, I was too young to drink but the folks in Ft. Worth knew what the white sidewall haircut was about.
My wife's birthday is also the 5th of July. I dunno what that means but thought I'd toss it in just for the helluvit.
12. My room mate was named Milton Remmler. He was a Mayberry RFD kind of guy, and we remained roomies at Ft. Hunter as well. He and I went down to the BX one day and bought a couple of those ready to fly u-control airplanes. PT-19s they were. .049 Cox engines and held together with rubber bands. There was a little storage shed out by the parade field with about a 5' roof that was gently pitched. We learned to land and take off from that little 8' roof that summer. We also had a lot of dog fights. A logical result was a lot of mid air collisions. We laughed, strapped them back together and carried on. Milt was the first fatality from our class in Viet Nam and died as a result of a mid air collision with another Huey.
13. Sometimes there are big hatches of crickets in Texas. Our flight training was suspended for 2 days after such an affair. It took that long to clean them out of the choppers. It took us about an hour to clean them out of the 3rd floor barracks.
14. You know how long it takes a flight platoon to scrape the wax off of linoleum floors with razor blades? All fuggin' day! You know how easy it is to die after that in those barracks? Simple, just scuff the floor and find out.
15. On a windy day while doing cross country, it is disheartening to get passed by a school bus.
16. Night flight was scary chitt(ok). Autorotations weren't a lot of fun either. The Hiller came down like a wet sock. The TH-55 like a sack of bricks. The guys flying the OH-13's were pussies.
I shall offer discourse on Ft. Hunter, Hueys and Cherry tobacco pipes next.
