“Hey, Bill,” the Boss said as I trudged across the company street from the flight line, “come into the Orderly Room after you get human again.”
Since getting human entailed divesting myself of armor, flight gear, survival gear, miscellaneous weaponry, scuffed leather boots and flight suit, taking a (cold) shower, then putting on a clean flight suit, specific weaponry, and *shined* boots, I figured that meant
1. I wasn’t in trouble,
2. neither was anybody in the First Platoon, and
3. the Boss wasn’t in a hurry to impart the news, which only reinforced reasons 1. and 2.
“Yessir? What’s up?” asked I.
“You’re the only Aircraft Commander without his own personal aircraft. That’s about to change. We just got three brand new H-models, fresh from the factory, and one of them is now *yours*.”
“Whooooo! Thank you, sir!” Christmas in July! The H-model Huey had a *bag* of power, and a new Huey meant a new engine, so I wouldn’t have to nurse any more weak aircraft out of any more hot LZs!
“Got another present for you. Your own crewchief – school-trained. He’s still in-processing, so I’ll have Top tell him meet you at the aircraft.”
“Yessir! I’m halfway there right now!”
It was beautiful. Factory-fresh, inside and out, with actual *paint* on the floor -- multiply new-car smell by ten, and that's how good it was. I reveled in the idea that it was *mine* for a little while, then popped the cowlings to look at the engine. It was *clean*! No oil seeps, no stains, and the safety wires were *shiny*!
I climbed into *my* seat in the cockpit, and pulled out the logbook.
There were only two entries on the Dash Twelve. Every Huey I’d flown in Vietnam had at least two pages of writeups for items awaiting maintenance, but this aircraft only had two – “DEER check (the engine power test) complete” and “Flight 1 – OK.” While I was still marveling at the Mysterious and Wonderful Ways of the Army that gave me this new toy, there was a tap on my seat armor. I looked up and beheld
“Hi, Captain Tuttle? I’m Spec Four R[edacted]. Is this our aircraft?”
“Good to meet you. Yeah, it is – ain’t she a beauty?”
“Sure is, sir! Wow – I’ve seen Hueys before, but this is the closest I’ve ever been to one.”
*instant cognitive dissonance*
“Uhhhhhhh – I thought you were school-trained…?”
“Yessir, at Fort Eustis. On -58s.”
*sigh*
A school-trained master mechanic -- on a completely *different* aircraft.
“Oooooooo-kaaaaay. First order of business – what’s your first name?”
“George, sir.”
“George, whenever it’s just us two out here, I’m Bill. This aircraft is gonna need a Daily before it flies tomorrow, so we’re both about to become intimately familiar with every nut and bolt on it. Grab the logbook and a couple of rags, take off your shirt and follow me…”
Next day, George was out at the aircraft even before I was, impressing the doorgunner with both his complete lack of knowledge of the M-60D and his incredible ability to absorb instruction and tips on its care and feeding. I left the two of them to their gunnery class – I *can* keep the priorities straight, yanno – and I set about preflighting the aircraft that I had just thoroughly inspected the previous evening.
Twenty minutes later, my copilot showed up with our C-rat lunches (four boxes – the enlisted guys were usually loaded down just carrying the guns and tools to the ship). Ten minutes after that, the flight cranked and we hovered out of our revetments, joined up on climbout and headed for Nam Can, as far south as you could get in South Vietnam without being totally surrounded by water.
Remember John’s post about the Last Daisy Cutter? Remember my comment that I had a Daisy-Cutter TINS!*?
Heh…
Our mission was to insert a platoon of Ruff-Puffs [RF/PF: Regional Forces/Popular Forces. Local militiamen.] and their SEAL advisor from Nam Can village into a corner of the Nam Can Forest near the Nam Can River (no, I didn’t make all that up) after a C-130 had dropped a BLU-82 into the woods to clear out an Instant LZ. We were parked on the PSP strip on the riverbank just east of the village, waiting for the drop. We saw the C-130 fly southeast, then climb almost straight up, hanging on the props – and then the world’s biggest propane tank appeared, followed shortly thereafter by the world’s biggest cargo ‘chute. We watched it descend and then…
…the ground turned to Jell-O. Five four-man helicopter crews crouched as five four-ton helicopters *danced* eight inches sideways across the PSP. We looked at each other, then at the surprisingly small column of smoke rising from the woods about five miles away.
We loaded our troopies and took off, and when we got to the site of the Instant LZ, we discovered a mist-filled hole in the fifty-foot trees barely large enough for one Huey.
With water at the bottom.
Perhaps I should take this moment to explain that the Nam Can Forest was only a forest in the sense that there were lots of trees growing in it. The same exact trees that grew in the U Minh Forest, actually.
Mangroves.
The Nam Can, like the U Minh, was a mangrove swamp.
Big Blue hit *mud* and then had evidently gone clear to the Earth’s lithosphere before exploding, so most of the blast came straight *up* through an area just slightly larger than Ol’ Blue’s own diameter. We made one orbit, and C&C called, “Backseat wants to go ahead with the insertion. Any volunteers for firsties?”
Wellllll, a Platoon Leader’s gotta *lead*, right?
I said, “I’ve got the strongest engine – I’ll go in and see how much torque it takes to hover straight down.” After c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y approaching the hole and figuring the best entry to keep my tail rotor out of the trees (I *did* mention the trees, didn’t I?), I started to descend. At about twenty feet below the treetops, I idly noticed that water was still streaming from the branches, and not-so-idly noticed that the branches were also full of *snakes* that had probably been deposited there by the blast. *And* they were moving. Irritatedly.
“You guys in back keep the Puffs inside the aircraft until we see how friggin’ deep this puddle is.”
“Yessir!” “Roj that, sir!”
“Keep an eye on the torque – lemme know what our max reading is – I’m gonna be real gentle, because Baby-San’s flying the company dog today.”
“Yup. Just don’t drown us.”
I settled skid deep, then belly deep, then water started pouring into the chin bubble, and
“Sir, two of the Puffs just jumped out – they vanished! All’s I can see is the antenna on the radio one of ‘em had!”
I shot a glance out the door just in time to see a pair of helmet liners float past, upside-down, then I looked over my shoulder to see George standing on the skid, grabbing a handful of antenna and hauling the errant RTO to the surface. A moment later, his buddy popped up, minus web gear, but still holding his weapon, and George hauled him in, too.
I keyed the mike and said, “The water’s at least ten feet dee—“ just as
*pok!*
a bullet came through the windshield.
I looked up and, fifty feet away, tied into a tree, was a black-pajama’ed little bastard, soaking wet, bleeding from the nose and ears, blearily aiming his SKS for another shot.
I pulled pitch, told George to take him out, then tried to miss the same branches on the outbound trip that I’d missed on the voyage in. Just as I cleared the treetops, somebody in the flight hollered, “One-Five, break left, break left! There’s a fifty-one across the river and he’s
*TAK!* *PANG!* *TAK!* *TAK!*
shooting at you!”
Geez. Ever have one of *those* days?
After I dodged and dipped and jinked and took two more *PANG!*s and a *TAK!* before I flew out of range, I started to climb to altitude to look for a decent (i.e., relatively safe) spot to land and see how badly we'd been hit when George announced, “Sir, we’ve got fluid pouring out onto the deck from behind the tranny wall. I can’t tell if it’s from the engine or the tranny.”
The emergency procedure for "Helicopter Leaking Oil Like a Sieve" is "Land as soon as possible." B-a-c-k down we went. The engine gauges were normal, but the torquemeter was reading zero and the tranny oil temp was rising as fast as the tranny oil pressure was dropping. Five seconds after I plunked us down into a flooded paddy, the main rotor came to a screeching halt.
Okay, I exaggerated.
It was closer to six seconds.
I posted the Ruff Puffs on a nearby paddy dike and stuck George and the gunner on the roof with the two -60s so they could fire over the dike without hitting our little buddies, then stepped over George to examine what was left of the transmission.
George looked up at me, grinned, and said, “We get to do this every day, right sir?”
Since getting human entailed divesting myself of armor, flight gear, survival gear, miscellaneous weaponry, scuffed leather boots and flight suit, taking a (cold) shower, then putting on a clean flight suit, specific weaponry, and *shined* boots, I figured that meant
1. I wasn’t in trouble,
2. neither was anybody in the First Platoon, and
3. the Boss wasn’t in a hurry to impart the news, which only reinforced reasons 1. and 2.
“Yessir? What’s up?” asked I.
“You’re the only Aircraft Commander without his own personal aircraft. That’s about to change. We just got three brand new H-models, fresh from the factory, and one of them is now *yours*.”
“Whooooo! Thank you, sir!” Christmas in July! The H-model Huey had a *bag* of power, and a new Huey meant a new engine, so I wouldn’t have to nurse any more weak aircraft out of any more hot LZs!
“Got another present for you. Your own crewchief – school-trained. He’s still in-processing, so I’ll have Top tell him meet you at the aircraft.”
“Yessir! I’m halfway there right now!”
It was beautiful. Factory-fresh, inside and out, with actual *paint* on the floor -- multiply new-car smell by ten, and that's how good it was. I reveled in the idea that it was *mine* for a little while, then popped the cowlings to look at the engine. It was *clean*! No oil seeps, no stains, and the safety wires were *shiny*!
I climbed into *my* seat in the cockpit, and pulled out the logbook.
There were only two entries on the Dash Twelve. Every Huey I’d flown in Vietnam had at least two pages of writeups for items awaiting maintenance, but this aircraft only had two – “DEER check (the engine power test) complete” and “Flight 1 – OK.” While I was still marveling at the Mysterious and Wonderful Ways of the Army that gave me this new toy, there was a tap on my seat armor. I looked up and beheld
“Hi, Captain Tuttle? I’m Spec Four R[edacted]. Is this our aircraft?”
“Good to meet you. Yeah, it is – ain’t she a beauty?”
“Sure is, sir! Wow – I’ve seen Hueys before, but this is the closest I’ve ever been to one.”
*instant cognitive dissonance*
“Uhhhhhhh – I thought you were school-trained…?”
“Yessir, at Fort Eustis. On -58s.”
*sigh*
A school-trained master mechanic -- on a completely *different* aircraft.
“Oooooooo-kaaaaay. First order of business – what’s your first name?”
“George, sir.”
“George, whenever it’s just us two out here, I’m Bill. This aircraft is gonna need a Daily before it flies tomorrow, so we’re both about to become intimately familiar with every nut and bolt on it. Grab the logbook and a couple of rags, take off your shirt and follow me…”
Next day, George was out at the aircraft even before I was, impressing the doorgunner with both his complete lack of knowledge of the M-60D and his incredible ability to absorb instruction and tips on its care and feeding. I left the two of them to their gunnery class – I *can* keep the priorities straight, yanno – and I set about preflighting the aircraft that I had just thoroughly inspected the previous evening.
Twenty minutes later, my copilot showed up with our C-rat lunches (four boxes – the enlisted guys were usually loaded down just carrying the guns and tools to the ship). Ten minutes after that, the flight cranked and we hovered out of our revetments, joined up on climbout and headed for Nam Can, as far south as you could get in South Vietnam without being totally surrounded by water.
Remember John’s post about the Last Daisy Cutter? Remember my comment that I had a Daisy-Cutter TINS!*?
Heh…
Our mission was to insert a platoon of Ruff-Puffs [RF/PF: Regional Forces/Popular Forces. Local militiamen.] and their SEAL advisor from Nam Can village into a corner of the Nam Can Forest near the Nam Can River (no, I didn’t make all that up) after a C-130 had dropped a BLU-82 into the woods to clear out an Instant LZ. We were parked on the PSP strip on the riverbank just east of the village, waiting for the drop. We saw the C-130 fly southeast, then climb almost straight up, hanging on the props – and then the world’s biggest propane tank appeared, followed shortly thereafter by the world’s biggest cargo ‘chute. We watched it descend and then…
…the ground turned to Jell-O. Five four-man helicopter crews crouched as five four-ton helicopters *danced* eight inches sideways across the PSP. We looked at each other, then at the surprisingly small column of smoke rising from the woods about five miles away.
We loaded our troopies and took off, and when we got to the site of the Instant LZ, we discovered a mist-filled hole in the fifty-foot trees barely large enough for one Huey.
With water at the bottom.
Perhaps I should take this moment to explain that the Nam Can Forest was only a forest in the sense that there were lots of trees growing in it. The same exact trees that grew in the U Minh Forest, actually.
Mangroves.
The Nam Can, like the U Minh, was a mangrove swamp.
Big Blue hit *mud* and then had evidently gone clear to the Earth’s lithosphere before exploding, so most of the blast came straight *up* through an area just slightly larger than Ol’ Blue’s own diameter. We made one orbit, and C&C called, “Backseat wants to go ahead with the insertion. Any volunteers for firsties?”
Wellllll, a Platoon Leader’s gotta *lead*, right?
I said, “I’ve got the strongest engine – I’ll go in and see how much torque it takes to hover straight down.” After c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y approaching the hole and figuring the best entry to keep my tail rotor out of the trees (I *did* mention the trees, didn’t I?), I started to descend. At about twenty feet below the treetops, I idly noticed that water was still streaming from the branches, and not-so-idly noticed that the branches were also full of *snakes* that had probably been deposited there by the blast. *And* they were moving. Irritatedly.
“You guys in back keep the Puffs inside the aircraft until we see how friggin’ deep this puddle is.”
“Yessir!” “Roj that, sir!”
“Keep an eye on the torque – lemme know what our max reading is – I’m gonna be real gentle, because Baby-San’s flying the company dog today.”
“Yup. Just don’t drown us.”
I settled skid deep, then belly deep, then water started pouring into the chin bubble, and
“Sir, two of the Puffs just jumped out – they vanished! All’s I can see is the antenna on the radio one of ‘em had!”
I shot a glance out the door just in time to see a pair of helmet liners float past, upside-down, then I looked over my shoulder to see George standing on the skid, grabbing a handful of antenna and hauling the errant RTO to the surface. A moment later, his buddy popped up, minus web gear, but still holding his weapon, and George hauled him in, too.
I keyed the mike and said, “The water’s at least ten feet dee—“ just as
*pok!*
a bullet came through the windshield.
I looked up and, fifty feet away, tied into a tree, was a black-pajama’ed little bastard, soaking wet, bleeding from the nose and ears, blearily aiming his SKS for another shot.
I pulled pitch, told George to take him out, then tried to miss the same branches on the outbound trip that I’d missed on the voyage in. Just as I cleared the treetops, somebody in the flight hollered, “One-Five, break left, break left! There’s a fifty-one across the river and he’s
*TAK!* *PANG!* *TAK!* *TAK!*
shooting at you!”
Geez. Ever have one of *those* days?
After I dodged and dipped and jinked and took two more *PANG!*s and a *TAK!* before I flew out of range, I started to climb to altitude to look for a decent (i.e., relatively safe) spot to land and see how badly we'd been hit when George announced, “Sir, we’ve got fluid pouring out onto the deck from behind the tranny wall. I can’t tell if it’s from the engine or the tranny.”
The emergency procedure for "Helicopter Leaking Oil Like a Sieve" is "Land as soon as possible." B-a-c-k down we went. The engine gauges were normal, but the torquemeter was reading zero and the tranny oil temp was rising as fast as the tranny oil pressure was dropping. Five seconds after I plunked us down into a flooded paddy, the main rotor came to a screeching halt.
Okay, I exaggerated.
It was closer to six seconds.
I posted the Ruff Puffs on a nearby paddy dike and stuck George and the gunner on the roof with the two -60s so they could fire over the dike without hitting our little buddies, then stepped over George to examine what was left of the transmission.
George looked up at me, grinned, and said, “We get to do this every day, right sir?”
/sarc from an old SFC!
Great. Big. Nassssssty. Holes...
The Ruff Puffs were motivated and the one, when in drowning mode, managed to hold onto his weapon. Not bad for "militia".
Oddly enough, I mean that, just not in the literal sense.
*And* it only took three days for the hangar rats to repair everything.
Which was a *good* thing, because that's how long it took the hangover to wear off...
oh, and I am sure Carborundum had a fit of vapors when he saw your very own new Huey... he probably hates snakes, too...
Changes that need to be made ahead of time, not after the fact.
Parallel to your needing to have people trained to fit the duty assigned kind of changes; and windows that don't allow bullets in...and who knows how we could design helicopters so that it is somehow safer to drop and pick up?...who knows
But, back to the point. Thank you all for all you do, and if you get a chance come see us here in San Diego. In the meantime, we appreciate all your inputs. Let us know what you want for when you get home and we will be working on it 'til then.
Oh, also, if you invite me as a friend, when we meet on Tuesday we can include you in the meeting through this NOC online. We meet on Tuesday at 1:00p.m. San Diego time...either way, we can communicate because in the NOC what is said is here when you all are available.
Peace and Blessings to all,
elizabeth
About that sick sense of humor, it was the only way to survive, during that time.
*WARNING, you may stumble on some REAL snark in this comment!*
Seriously, Bill, thanks for sharing this story. Y'all have a great weekend.
We love the humor also, and also, respect what you survived. Thanks for the share.
We love the humor also, and also, respect what you survived. Thanks for the share. YOu write really well.
The more I read about the CH-47, the more amazed at just how capable that aircraft is.
Bill, if you don't mind me asking, are we talking about Hubert here?
The CH-54's designation was Tarhe, but I only heard someone call it that *once* -- as far as we were concerned, it was a Skycrane. The Army named the UH-1 the Iroquois, but it was a Huey (or a Hubert) as far as we were concerned. Speaking of capability, I watched a CH-54 strain for 10 minutes to get a CH-47 out of a flooded paddy and then fly off. A half hour later, another CH-47 appeared and popped it free in five minutes, then flew off with it.
John christened my faithful steed Hubert after I referred to Hueys a few times by that sobriquet. We usually referred to the individual beasts by their tail numbers, although a lot of aircraft *did* get personalized. Eventually, we painted "Sat Cong" on the belly so that everyone looking up at us could see our intentions.
"Sat Cong" is Viet for "Kill Commies"...
What was that you mentioned about a book? I think it would do well...
I've just about tossed the idea of a book -- besides, the TINS! series are really just
a hodgepodgeloosely-organized chapters of what it'd be.Well, about *half* of what it'd be, anyway. I haven't reviewed my outline in several years...
Just a quick stop by the house to let the doggies out between the 3-y-o second cousin's b-day party and an evening spent with my sister the bride-to-be to watch a movie and let their kitties start getting used to me again for when I kitty-sit in November...
I get the Hubert reference now, but that whole "Sat Cong" thing is just sooo politically incorrect. Next thing you know, the armored goobers 'll start mounting commie skulls on the front of their tanks.
...Whoops! Wrong war. My bad. :)
I second the idea of even just a TINS book, although I suspect you could do more than that. For all the Hueys we've seen on screen and TV, I've never seen a popular treatment of the history of rotary-wing aviation in Vietnam. You touched on a couple of points 'way back in the MacNamara thread (interesting stuff, BTW), but that, alas, was shut down for other reasons.
It would be great to see a general (not academic!) history of how the Huey & Company derivatives affected US Army doctrine. I recall you once observed that the Cobra is still more effective than the Apache for CAS, and I note that the Marines still use the Twin Huey and the SuperCobra/Viper as front-line aircraft.
For that matter, the Hog (I would say) is still one of the finest CAS aircraft ever designed, and it's not exactly high-tech. Considering other craft such as the original-thread Chinook, it seems self-evident that bleeding-edge is not always the optimum solution.
Better that the helicopter got shot full of holes and not the helicopter PILOT. Sheesh. Gotta look at it in the right light.
Not that I don't appreciate the plaudits, though...
Green ill-becometh thee...