An Assault Helicopter Unit in Vietnam (Undaunted Valor 1)

As I read off each item, Mr. West pointed it out to us and showed us how to inspect that item. As he finished up, he said, “Tomorrow I’ll read the checklist and you will do the inspection, Cory.”

“Yes, sir.”

He sent me back to the classroom to join the others for the bus ride. Fort Wolters had two major heliports, each with about seven hundred and fifty aircraft on them. Each morning at 0800 hours, all fifteen hundred aircraft took off. They returned at 1200 hours, then launched again at 1300 hours and returned at 1700 hours. Those aircraft would scatter across the countryside around Mineral Wells, Texas, to stage fields leased from local ranchers and farmers where training would be conducted. In addition to the stage fields, there were designated training locations where cadets could practice pinnacle approaches and slope landings. The students flying these aircraft had less than one hundred hours flying time, and the safety record was truly amazing considering the number of aircraft each day in the air and the low level of experience most of the pilots possessed.

As the bus pulled into the stage field where we were to meet our flight instructor, there were four asphalt lanes about the length of a football field with each lane about ten feet wide. Painted on each of these lanes, twenty yards apart, were four white squares designated as touchdown points for landing. Except, no one was landing there. All the helicopters were in the large field adjacent to the asphalt lanes, and those aircraft appeared to be in controlled crashes! Some were spinning wildly, others going up and down like yo-yos, and still others were doing both. Eventually each aircraft came back to the one building on the field to exchange students and refuel.

As Mr. West shut our aircraft down to refuel, Bob climbed out and walked over to me.

“How was it?” I asked.

“Oh my God! The flight out was nice, and he let me fly the thing. When we got here, he made the approach and took the aircraft over to the field at a hover. He set it down, explained each of the control

s to me again and told me to hover. It was like riding a bucking bronco and Brahman bull all at once. And he was laughing! Scared the crap out of me.”

“No shit!” I said.

“Finally he took the controls and set the thing on the ground, and then, one at a time, he would let me take a control while he handled the others. That wasn’t bad, but when he gave me all four again, I was riding the bull, and someone had just opened the gate.”

“Hey, Cory, get your ass over here and let’s go,” called Mr. West as he finished refueling the aircraft. As I climbed in and was getting my seat belt adjusted, he asked, “You have any flight experience, Cory?”

“Yes, sir. I have a private pilot’s license, fixed-wing,” I responded.

“That’s good. You will have some air sense, but this is nothing like flying a plane. This is the cyclic.” He indicated the control stick between my legs. “Go ahead and take it with your right hand. When you have it, state, ‘I have the aircraft.’ The response is, ‘You have the aircraft.’ This is the transfer of positive control of the aircraft. Whatever direction you move the cyclic in, that’s the direction the aircraft is moving horizontally. That lever in your left hand is the collective and controls vertical movement. Take it with your left hand.” I did.

“To go up, you pull it up, and to go down, you push it down. Your left hand has a death grip on the throttle. Relax. Every time you move the collective, you must increase or decrease the throttle and keep the engine rpm in the green arc here on the tachometer. Just a slight twist will be enough.” He pointed at the tachometer.

“Now your feet are resting on the pedals. The pedals turn the nose of the aircraft to the left or the right. If you turn the nose to the left, you must increase your throttle, and because you increase your throttle, you may have to decrease your collective a bit to maintain your same hover height of three feet. Anytime you move the collective or the pedals, you will also have to move the throttle in order to maintain your hover height, which means you will have to move the collective as well. Pretty simple, really. Like a plane, all control movements are small and smooth. Any questions?”

Only about a thousand questions at this point. “No, sir,” I lied, and I was sure he knew it, but he just smiled. He hovered the aircraft to the field, set it down and told me I had the controls. I repeated, “I have the controls,” indicating positive control of the aircraft. Well, sort of.

“You have the aircraft. Okay, pick up to a hover,” he instructed me, and the next hour was a repeat of what Bob had experienced. Disneyland had nothing on this ride!

Gradually, over the next two weeks, things improved in our ability to hover and fly the aircraft. At about ten hours’ flying time, cadets started soloing. At eleven hours, Mr. West told me to hover to the building. Climbing out of the aircraft, he said, “Cory, take it around the pattern three times, landing on strip four, panel four. Any questions?”

“No, sir.” This time I wasn’t lying, and I took the aircraft around the pattern three times. But I also talked out loud the whole time, repeating instructions to myself.

Besides hovering, takeoffs and landings, we were also instructed in how to execute autorotations. When the engine quits, then the helicopter goes into an autorotation, falling with the aerodynamics of a simonized brick. The pilot must a) identify he has a problem: “Oh, my engine just quit!”; b) respond correctly to the problem: immediately put the collective down and maintain rotor rpm in the green arc on the tachometer while maintaining sixty knot airspeed; c) pick a landing zone suitable to put the aircraft into: “Where the hell is a field or highway that’s clear of power lines or fences?”; and d) land the aircraft. Okay, flare at fifty feet to decrease descent and slow forward motion, pop the collective at twenty-five feet, level the skids, pull more collective at three feet. From an altitude of one thousand feet, the pilot has about one minute to do that.

We were still expected to maintain our same standards for clean barracks. However, now we had only two students per room, so it was much easier to maintain our respective areas. The bathrooms were still communal, however. Our TAC officer, CWO2 Sloneger, set the standards the day we arrived, and we never had a problem, until he decided to go on leave and the senior TAC, CWO3 Robertson, filled in. On day one, he wasn’t satisfied with the condition of the bathroom. This went on for about four days, until we’d had enough of using toothbrushes to clean the floors. That evening, we moved his entire office into the bathroom. Come morning, we held our breath as we assembled in the company street. He came into the building and went to his office. Expecting an explosion, we heard nothing. When he returned, he acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary. He took roll call and released us to go to breakfast. Damn, nothing! However, when we returned, one of our members went in to use the bathroom.

“What do you mean taking a shit in my office! How dare you take a crap in my office? Are you trying to be disrespectful to me?” screamed the senior TAC. Some poor schmuck had walked right into an ass chewing. We suddenly realized we were going to have to hold it until we got to the flight line. That evening, we reclaimed our bathroom. We moved everything back into his office, and he never complained about the condition of the bathroom again.

About two months into our flight training, we returned from the flight line and were told to get in company formation right away. Once all two hundred and seventy-five of us were assembled, as we’d had about seventy-five drop out at this point, the company commander came forward and addressed the class. One of our fellow classmates had crashed that day and was killed. That was something none of us had considered at this point in our training. His death would not be the last, either. Another student and his flight instructor were killed in a midair collision with another aircraft flown by someone from another class. How there weren’t a lot more midair collisions always amazed me.

Primary flight training came to a close four months after it had started. We’d started with a class of three hundred and fifty and graduated a class of one hundred and seventy-five. Those who didn’t complete the course in most cases found themselves in the infantry on their way to Vietnam. The big decision on graduation was where to go for our next phase of training. Fort Rucker, Alabama, had always been the home of Army Aviation, but with Vietnam in full swing, it had reached its capacity for taking student pilots. A new Advanced Rotary Wing Flight training facility had opened at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Georgia. The Army actually asked for volunteers to go there. Let’s see, I thought, go to Fort Rucker, which sits in the middle of a dry county and the adjacent town is Enterprise, Alabama, or go to Hunter Army Airfield, with an adjacent major city, Savannah, and in a wet county. That was a no-brainer decision for me.

Right after graduation that day, a group of us met at the post chapel. Bob had asked the girl back home to marry him and she’d accepted. Lin was as cute as could be and we had a grand party after the wedding, which was attended by Lin’s sister and both sets of parents. Being married was frowned upon by the Army prior to primary flight but okay for advanced flight school. Lin and Bob were heading to Savannah along with me, Bill and Johnson.

Chapter 4

Advanced Flight Training

Bill Michel, my roommate, and I arrived in Savannah the night before we were due to report to Hunter Army Airfield, as had Bob and Lin as they sought out an apartment in town. Married men were allowed to live off post and not in the barracks. The city was covered in fog the next morning, which wasn’t a problem for the cab driver who drove us to the base well prior to our noon reporting time. Unfortunately, most of the eighty members of our class were on the same commercial airliner that couldn’t land that morning. Those cadets were delayed because of the fog and arrived after the 1200 formation. All those that arrived late were stopped at the entrance to the WOC company by a TAC officer, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Clinton. Since I’d arrived early, he made me the class cadet commander and had me stand next to him to meet the late arrivals.

“Cadet Cory, get these people in a formation,” he growled at me. Mr. Clinton didn’t really talk. He growled.

“Yes, sir.” Picking four cadets that I knew out of the group, I made them the squad leaders and told them to line up.