Your horoscope for today: There’s wisdom to be gained from combing through the recesses of your soul and clearing out the cobwebs.
Helicopter pilots don’t have recesses, we have compartments. Whether we’re born compartmentalizers or we learn the trick in Flight School doesn’t matter, we’re fully-functional compartmentalizers before they shake us out of the bag with Junior Wings on our chests.
When you’re in the air and nothing is going wrong, you have the luxury of browsing the compartments. When things turn sour, the lids to the compartments slam shut except the one labeled “Fly The Aircraft!” -- that mental trick allows us to survive in the air.
Memories (as distinct from experience and knowledge) may have relevance to the “Fly The Aircraft!” bin and are usually in close proximity -- emotions occupy entirely separate compartments on the periphery. Makes us really lousy at relationships, but it helps keep us alive when the cockpit turns into the last place in the world you want to be.
Sometimes, the compartments leak. Details in the memory bins furthest from “Fly the Aircraft!” fade, unless something hammers them into place -- but when that happens, nothing will budge them…
I’m putting the rest of this in flash traffic/extended entry. It’s not one of my War Stories, it’s a story about one incident that happened during my war.
It’s not a TINS. It’s also a bit long and decidedly dark…
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I had four different callsigns in Vietnam. When I first got there, the Boss discovered I was fluent in Normal English and could spell my way out of a paper bag, so he blessed me off as the Admin Officer, which meant that I took care of the daily foothills of paperwork while he and the XO were out flying -- we never had a full complement of pilots, and they took up the slack in the Gun and Flight Platoons. So, I started as Vulture Three, which I used maybe twice. Make that three times -- I think I used it the first time I got shot down.
My second callsign was Vulture One-Five -- the Assistant Platoon Leader, First Platoon. One-Six, the Platoon Leader, was a short-timer, and he started grooming me to take over the Platoon after he left.
Before he departed, our Gun Platoon Leader was KIA, and I was made Copperhead Three-Six. One of the senior Warrants in the guns had previously applied for a direct commission and his paperwork was approved a few days after the first time I got shot down in a Charlie-model gunship -- I was more than happy when the Boss asked if I’d step down so our newest Lieutenant could claim command time on his OER.
I resumed using One-Five. My Platoon Leader DEROSed about a month later, and I became Vulture One-Six. I never had an assistant PL, so I used One-Five and One-Six pretty much interchangeably, depending on whether I was flying as the C&C (Command and Control), Flight Lead, or Trail.
In June, 1970, we got a newbie Captain; he outranked me, so I started grooming him as the new One-Six. He was a pretty quick study, so we started concentrating on the survival skills. We had maybe two flights together before I started NightHawking again, so the senior ACs took over his tutelage. I was officially One-Five again.
In mid-August, I was back flying CAs with the Flight and on the 26th, One-Six was Chalk Two and I was Chalk Three in a flight of five. We were flying staggered right -- odd-numbered in trail behind Lead, even-numbered offset to the right. My Peter Pilot was "Little Mac," one of our Test Pilots, and I was giving him some formation flight refresher training; I was on the controls, flying in the left seat so I could scan the instruments while I maintained my sight picture on Chalk Two. We were on a left base to pick up some troops we’d inserted for a sweep several hours earlier -- the PZ was a couple of klicks from the area in which we’d inserted them. Lead gave us a heads-up that the final approach would be steep because the PZ was in a nasty area and there were thick treelines along our approach path. I told Mac to get on the controls with me when we started our descent. Then Lead turned left to establish us on final.
In a staggered formation, when Lead makes a turn, the aircraft in trail behind Lead usually slow slightly to avoid overtaking Lead and the aircraft on the outside of the formation have to increase airspeed to maintain their positions in the formation. As I was turning left, I watched Chalk Two drift slowly to the rear -- I knew One-Six hadn’t mastered all the tricks yet, and imagined what the AC was saying to him. Our normal radio chatter had died to the essentials -- negative suppression inbound, but if the flight takes fire, suppress it without hitting the friendlies. By the time we rolled out of the turn to final, I had to look over my right shoulder to see Chalk Two. I saw the aircraft nose dip and knew that Two had just increased power to put on a burst of speed to get back in position -- ahead to my right front and offset 135 degrees from Lead. We flew tight formations going into an area; the Book recommends a minimum of two rotor-disk separation between aircraft. We never got that far away from each other. Chalk Two was now about sixty feet outside my door, closing the gap between himself and Lead.
Hell opened up.
I watched Chalk Two rise a hundred feet above us and begin a left roll. By the time he was fully-inverted, I was looking up at him through the greenhouse. I distinctly remember thinking, “They’re inverted -- oh, my God…”
You don’t survive going inverted in a Huey a thousand feet above the ground.
“Fly The Aircraft!”
He's inverted and falling out of the sky and he's directly above me…
“Fly The Aircraft!”
His rotors are gonna mesh with mine and the two of us will disintegrate in mid-air…
“Fly The Aircraft!”
Mac was gaping up at Two through his greenhouse -- he couldn’t believe what he was seeing…
“Fly The Aircraft!”
I slammed the cyclic left and pulled the collective to the stops.
I rolled the aircraft 90 degrees because anything less wouldn’t get us away from four tons of metal and fuel closing with us at 5,000 feet-per-minute.
I overtorqued the transmission and overtemped the engine.
Three seconds later, I rolled the Huey upright and there was chatter on all three radios:
“Are we taking fire?” “Two hit Three on the way down -- wait, no, Three just rolled out of it.” “Flight, are you guys taking fire down there? The troops just called and said a rocket hit a helicopter.” “Copperheads are up north and we haven’t fired anything!” "Five's in after Two." “Damn it! One of the crew just fell out!” “I don’t think it’s small arms -- no muzzle flashes. No tracers.” “Five’s approaching Two -- they just hit.” “Trail, watch yourself -- the troops are still saying it was a rocket.” “Lead, this is Five. I'm in the PZ. They’re all dead. One of the enlisted guys fell out on the way down, but everybody else is still inside. It’s flat. The aircraft is flat.”
Silence.
C&C: “Who was it? Who was on board?”
Silence.
Lead: “Laurence was the AC.”
Silence.
Lead’s Crewchief: “Jacobson.”
Silence.
My Crewchief: “Halstead was flying in the gunner’s seat.”
Silence.
Me: “One-Six was with Laurence. Captain Carr.”
Silence.
C&C: “Flight, return to Can Tho and stand by.”
Five: “I’ll stay for the recovery.”
C&C: “No. You go back with them. We’re going to insert troops out to the west and south to catch whoever shot Two down.”
Me: “Four, Three’s now Chalk Two. I’m sliding right. Break. Lead, I think I overtorqued back there. I’ll be shutting down to have maintenance take a look at it.”
Silence.
Lead: "Flight, come up trail. Keep it spread out."
On the way back to Can Tho, I concentrated on the engine and transmission instruments. I concentrated on keeping off Lead's tail. I concentrated on the mechanics of flying, because that was the only thing that kept me from seeing the last thing I saw before I rolled left. I was looking straight up through my greenhouse and I could see straight through Chalk Two’s greenhouse into the cockpit.
He raised his head and looked at me…
“Fly The Aircraft!”
Yeah. “Fly The Aircraft…”
Even when the compartments are leaking…
* * * * * * * * * * * *
WO1 William H. Laurence, Jr.
CPT Stephen Douglas Carr
SP5 Larry Bruce Jacobson
SP5 Benny Ray Halstead
Panel 07W-010 of the Wall.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
I tried to do this a couple of times over the years and I could never get it right.
This time, I hope I did...
20 Comments