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Bennett straightened up. “We expecting any enemy, Mr. Price?”
“Nothing more than the usual. If these guys are the same bunch as last week, no telling. If they’re VC and not the hard-core NVA, they can’t hit their ass with both hands let alone hit us in flight. If we are going to get hit, it’ll be on the approach going in or coming out. Okay, let’s saddle up.”
As we settled into our seats, the crew came forward and closed and secured our doors. Bennett grabbed the fire extinguisher and took his position next to the engine. I went through the start procedures and pressed and held the starter button. Slowly the turbine started turning, and at sixty-eight percent N1 I rolled the throttle open. Lou was tuning radios. Other aircraft were calling Flight Leader that they were up.
“Chalk Six is up,” Lou announced with a corresponding response from Lead. Finally all twelve aircraft were up and ready to depart. Flight Lead, Yellow One, announced leaving the revetment, followed by Chalk Two and so forth until Chalk Twelve announced he was in position.
Flight Lead announced, “Yellow One on the go,” and twelve aircraft started down the runway, following the leader.
“Flight, come up staggered right,” ordered Yellow One.
We flew different formations depending on several factors. Staggered right was Chalk Two flying behind and to the right of Chalk One, with Chalk Three behind Chalk One and to the left and back from Chalk Two, and so on for all twelve ships. To land such a formation, you needed a long landing zone, and we could fly staggered left or right. Another formation was wedge, which looked like a flock of geese in flight. Trail was one aircraft following the other. An echelon right or echelon left formation was all aircraft slightly behind and off to the side of the aircraft in front, with Flight Leader the very first aircraft. Switching between formations once in the air was done only if necessary.
“Yellow One, Chalk Two, over.”
“Chalk Two, go ahead.”
“Yellow One, we are clear of arty all the way to Bien Hoa, over.”
As Lou was bringing us up into our position as Chalk Six, he asked, “How much formation time do you have?”
“Just what we got in flight school and a couple of hours the other day,” I replied without looking in his direction.
“Don’t tell me this is your first combat assault.”
“Okay, I won’t, but it is.”
“Oh, it’s going to be a long day, I see.” He took a deep breath. “Okay, formation flying here isn’t like flight school,” he said as he moved closer to the right side of Chalk Five. “In Mother Rucker, they wanted two-rotor-blade width between aircraft. Here we fly at one to one-half rotor from the other.”
He was going for the half-rotor-blade distance, and my pucker factor was starting to suck the seat up my ass. I looked back at Chalk Seven. Oh shit, he’s going for the half-rotor distance as well. Lou was calmly smoking his cigarette and continuing with his lecture while he held the cyclic in his thumb, index and middle fingers.
“The one thing you don’t want to do is overlap rotor blades.” Oh, trust me, that ain’t happening. “Okay, you got it,” he said.
I responded, “I got it,” and wished I hadn’t. Immediately we started sliding back to a two-rotor-blade distance.
Chalk Seven called us. “Hey, Chalk Six, did the new guy just take it?” Great, now the entire formation knew I had it.
“Yeah, and he’s shitting in his pants.” Now that wasn’t true, but it wasn’t far from the truth.
“Okay, let’s close it back up and get with the formation.” I pulled in some more power and eased the aircraft forward. “Good, now just hold it here,” Lou said, and I immediately started drifting back. “No, get back up there.”
Lou hadn’t raised his voice or hit me yet but coached me back into position each time. However, every aircraft behind us was giving Lou a raft of shit about the speeding up and slowing down, which was causing an accordion effect on those behind us. After about thirty minutes, I had a death grip on the cyclic and white knuckles on the collective, with sweat just pouring off me.
“Okay, I got it,” Lou said as we approached the PZ in Bien Hoa to pick up the grunts. Stretched out before us were twelve groups of grunts, with seven grunts in each group, in the same formation as our flight. In addition, one grunt was out front in each group with his weapon above his head in both hands. Lou picked out group number six and eased the aircraft to a stop with us at a hover and the nose of the aircraft touching the nose of the soldier ground-guiding us to our spot. Lou touched his nose with the hovering aircraft and the grunt hardly felt it. Talk about a confidence builder for the grunts to see that kind of aircraft control. Good thing for that soldier it wasn’t me. As the soldiers climbed aboard, Yellow One came up and told us to “roll them back.” This meant we weren’t taking off right away as he was talking to the ground commander.
“Do you like formation flying?” Lou asked.
“To be honest, I’m uncomfortable in formation flights.”
“It shows. Look, no new guy does well in formation flying over here right out of school. They teach the basics, which you have. Now it’s a matter of taking what you know and applying it to combat. Why do we fly close together? Two reasons. First, if you’re two or more rotor blades away, the other aircraft can make some major attitude adjustments before you notice them, and then you’re playing catchup, which is no fun. Second, the closer we are to each other, the more concentrated our firepower is with all guns firing. At night in formation flying, close is much safer than two rotor blades apart. People flying formations at night will either be crawling up your ass or so far away you’ll wonder if they’re in the same formation. I’ll take the guy flying up my ass any day as he’s the safer aircraft.”
As we talked, we saw the ground commander walk over to his jeep and grab his gear. “Flight one minute,” Yellow One announced.
Lou rolled the throttle back to full power. “Okay. I’ll take this one and you get the next one.” Brown and Bennett cleared us to come up. The grunts were sitting on the floor and there were no smiles. They knew what was in store for them. No hot shower tonight, or hot food. Flight Lead lifted into the air and we followed, but Lou picked up at the same time as Chalk Four and ever so slightly before Chalk Five.
“You notice that I didn’t wait for Five to move his ass.”
“Yeah, why?” I asked.
