Winding Down

My introduction to helicopters came when I was twenty-years-old and the Selective Service selected me for service. They wanted me to come in for a physical examination. I guess they wanted to know if I was healthy enough to get shot. I heard about the guys who joined the army and had to tramp around in the jungle. They would be loaded down with a back pack, a pistol belt, (that had everything on it but a pistol), heavy combat boots, a metal helmet and carry a cumbersome rifle. A soldier would feel like the prospector’s donkey when they were done loading you up. If this wasn’t bad enough, you would have to watch so you didn’t step on a land mine or get ambushed. It seemed to me there should be a better way to go, so I asked if I could fly an airplane in the army. The recruiter told me they didn’t have any openings for airplane pilots, but they were a little short of helicopter pilots if I wanted to do that. (Later, I realized why they were short of helicopter pilots.) It seemed that a helicopter would still get me up and out of walking in the jungle, so I said, “OK.”

I first went through basic training, and after that ended up at the flight school. This was the first time I had actually seen a helicopter. I was given a ride and they explained how it worked to fly a helicopter. There is a lever, which they called a collective, on the left side that I was supposed to pull up and down to make the helicopter go up and down. This made sense to me and didn’t seem too difficult. There is a throttle at the end of the lever which had to be twisted one way when you pulled up, and the other way when you pushed down, to keep the engine RPM’s in a narrow, green arc. I figured I could do that. I had ridden motorcycles with a throttle like that. There was another stick between my legs: the original joy stick. They called it a cyclic, and it would make the helicopter move forward, backwards or whatever direction you would like to go. And lastly, there was a pedal for each foot to make the helicopter nose turn to the right or left. 

It all seemed very easy until I pulled up on the collective stick. The engine RPM’s started to decrease, so I twisted the throttle which made the helicopter go higher in the air and turn to the right. I pushed forward on the left peddle to straighten it out, but by now we were almost ready to tip over or have the tail boom and tail rotor hit the ground. I had forgotten about the stick between my legs trying to keep this machine straight, level and in one place. This was the first time I thought it might not be such a bad idea to walk in the jungle. The instructor-pilot quickly took the controls and put us at a nice, stable hover. He was an optimistic fellow and thought I would eventually get the hang of it. Like the trainer at the zoo, who thinks he can teach a seal to balance a ball on its nose. I think this was going to be much the same; I would have to balance a helicopter on an imaginary ball.

The next step was to then fly the helicopter forward and up, level off, and then come back down again to the same place that I had left. I eventually got to the point that I could do this without help from the instructor.

But, then they decided I needed to know how to fly the helicopter when the engine quit running!  A helicopter doesn’t glide like an airplane. When the engine stops the helicopter immediately falls from the sky. Your only hope of survival is to immediately push the collective stick all the way down so the wind of the falling helicopter will keep the rotor turning until you get close to the ground. About fifty feet from the ground you are supposed to then pull back on the cyclic to stop all forward speed; then you have one chance to pull the collective up and make a nice, soft landing.  Pulling too much on the collective, or too soon, you will fall to the ground. If you don’t pull enough, or pull to late, you hit the ground. With practice, you can get this down to the point that you don’t wreck the helicopter.

Later, they wanted us to do this at night in a small clearing in the woods. They would make a private E-0 stand in the clearing with a government issued flashlight, using the beam as a marker, so you could see where to land. Now, the only thing that was nuttier than trying to do a night-time autorotation to the ground in a small opening in the woods, was the guy who is standing on the ground with the flashlight as a student pilot comes falling out of the sky in a helicopter, with the engine shut off, hoping he can land in front of him.

Next, the training proceeded on to instrument flying. It was just what it was called. We were now supposed to fly the helicopter strictly by looking at the instruments. This was a task we couldn’t do while looking out the window a few months ago. The idea was to keep us from crashing if we inadvertently flew into a cloud or if a cloud should suddenly drop down on us. 

The last phase of training was tactical flying. Here we learned some ways to fly so we wouldn’t be as apt to get shot down. This made it necessary to navigate while flying just above tree tops and following the nap of the earth. We also learned how to fly in formation at night, have troops repel out of the helicopter and fly with a loaded helicopter.  

  After nearly a year of flight and ground school it was payback time, and my next association with the helicopter was to fly in Viet Nam.  We first flew as what was known as a peter-pilot, meaning you flew with an experienced pilot until you learned what they hadn’t taught you in flight school. I was stationed in the mountains and jungle area of Viet Nam. That meant flying into small landing zones (LZ’s) that had been cut out in the jungle. The troops were loaded into the helicopter and we flew them out to a remote location. Later, we would resupply them and eventually go back to get them out. Usually, the troops wanted to come out when they were being overrun by the enemy. This made for an exciting day but also a rewarding day. I felt sorry for the troops when we put them in an area, especially for the new ones who didn’t know what to expect when they landed. I could see the fear and anticipation on their faces as they didn’t know if they would come back out. What made it rewarding was to go back and get them. They were some happy little troopers, and it was satisfying for me to be able to bring them back to a safe place. 

Flying in Viet Nam was like playing with a sharp stick. It is fun until someone got hurt.  As long as we could keep from getting hurt we could have fun. Here we were, twenty-one or twenty-two-years-old, not just playing a video game; we were in the video game. We barely got to drive the family car at home, and here we had a nice big helicopter to fly around in, guns hanging on the sides, we could shoot out of the doors and pretend we were heroes! It was like driving the stage coach with the crew chief and door-gunner riding shotgun, only we didn’t have a strong- box filled with gold. What we did have was some mother’s kid in the back that she valued more than gold.

We would fly low, clipping the tops of trees with our skids, or along the beach, or in the mountains and above the jungle. The country was beautiful from up in the air. This was heaven for someone who enjoyed flying, but it was hell if you got shot down in an LZ and were surrounded by the enemy. Some of the guys enjoyed the danger and excitement of war while it would leave a scar forever on others.

I think everyone enjoyed the camaraderie of the guys you were with. In our company we all had call-signs such as: Thunder, Waldo, Pigpen, Obnoxious, Penis, Bozo, Bon-Bon and Couth.  My call-sign was officially Leif, but I was also known as Twilight. 

We escaped death in the day and went to the club at night. At the club, we  sometimes had a live show or a movie. I tried to watch The Green Beret a couple of times, but mortars came in and we had to run to the bunkers before the end of the movie. It was years later before I finally saw the end where John Wayne talks to a boy as the sun sets over the ocean. The only problem was that the ocean is on the east coast of Viet Nam. Only John Wayne and Hollywood could make the sun set in the east.

Flying in Viet Nam was a good experience: you learned to fly or you crashed. Sometimes you crashed, and then went back and learned some more. You learned to make instant decisions which had to be right. When you loaded the helicopter with troops you had to know if you could make it out of the LZ and over the trees with the weight you had on board. A decision had to be made so you could make it into an area and get close enough to the ground to pick up a person. We learned how big a tree branch we could cut with the rotor, and still keep the helicopter flying good enough to pick up a person on the ground. We worked with a sling load under the helicopter to move cargo from one area to another. We hauled everything inside from Miss America contestants, to pigs and chickens.

There were occasions when I hauled beer into a hot LZ using gun cover. A hot LZ was one where you got shot at going in, or there was a good possibility of it.  Gun cover usually consisted of a pair of gunships who would fly alongside as you made your approach and landed. A gunship pilot likes to shoot his guns like a singer likes to sing his songs. They just need an invitation. A flash from a rifle in the trees, or a line of tracers, would be just the invitation they were looking for. If we got shot at the gunship pilot would unleash his rockets or mini guns. It may have seemed to not be worth the risk to deliver such a nonessential cargo, but the guys on the ground thought it was great. It not only boosted their morale, but it made them feel like they weren’t left all alone way out there in the jungle. I felt we were there to support and help the guys on the ground. We were all in this together. I didn’t drive a car much the year I was in flight school and I didn’t drive a car at all the year I was in Viet Nam. By the time I left Viet Nam I was more comfortable flying a helicopter than I was driving a car.

After I left Viet Nam I was still in the army and was sent to Alabama and trained to be an instructor-pilot. My particular phase of instruction was teaching tactical flying. I taught low-level flying, formation day and night flying, and always, emergency procedures. I liked this phase because the students already knew how to fly and there was less of a chance that they would cause you to crash.

   When I got out of the army I thought I should go back to college and try to make something of myself. But, after a couple of years, I realized that I wasn’t learning how to do anything, and I kind of missed flying.

   When I was in the army I flew the Huey helicopter. This was called a slick ship which was used mainly for hauling people and things around. I volunteered to fly the Huey because it seemed to me that I might be able to use this experience later if I wanted to get a job. My other choice would have been to fly a gunship. Flying a slick ship would be more versatile in getting experience if I wanted to fly in civilian life. The only job opportunity for a gunship pilot might be working for the mafia.

   I checked around and finally found a company that would teach me to do ag work (crop dusting) with a helicopter. To do this job I had to throw out all I had learned about safe flight. All flying would be in what is called the dead-man’s curve on a graph of safe flying conditions. In addition to that, I would now be flying under any wires that I determined I could fly under. After a few mistakes, like flying through a wire and knocking the boom off on fence posts, I started to catch on. The nice thing about spraying in Minnesota, it only happens in the summer so I could finish college in the winter months. Once I finished college I realized that flying was still the only thing I knew how to do, so I moved to California where I could fly year around. I have now managed to make it to retirement without a bullet hole or a black and blue mark on me. For this I thank the angle on my shoulder, but I think she is getting tired now and I should give her a little lighter duty. 

It is now, without regret that I hang up my helmet. I was given the opportunity to enter the world of the eagles and angels. There is no closer feeling to flying than that of flying in a helicopter. You have the ability to move about in the sky with the agility of a bird. It is an exceptional feeling of freedom where you can cast off the shackles that bind you to the earth. I was able to go above the rest of mankind and look down on the earth. This is something man has wanted to do for thousands of years, and I have been one of the lucky ones to have done it for most of my life. However, flying is not natural for man and will only continue as long as one follows certain rules of flight. If you should try to break any of those rules God will quickly put you back on the ground, one way or another. I was lucky to have made a soft landing; I can now look back on my flying experiences with fond memories.  

 

A poem that connects with the photo: