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“Okay, Rick, get us at a three-foot hover.”
He brought us down but was sliding left and right. The aircraft wasn’t stable. Before I could say anything, like “Get it stable,” he cut the throttle but didn’t pop the collective until we were about a foot off the ground. We landed hard and had used little of the available power. Mentally, I was making some notes. Rick lacked confidence; he didn’t have a touch for hovering, and possibly his depth perception was off. At this point, my nerves were in serious need of relaxing, so I motioned the crew to join us. They appeared reluctant. The rest of the day was spent touring the area of operations and trying to get Rick oriented on his map. I let him fly and I held the map and pointed out landmarks. Maybe he was just rusty from flight school.
Arriving back at Lai Khe with Rick flying the aircraft, we entered the Chicken Coop and turned to our revetment. At about a five-foot hover, Rick worked us into the revetment almost like a pinball would in a pinball game. We didn’t touch, but it was an experience. Getting back to Flight Ops, I told the assistant ops officer I would get back to him on crew assignments for the next day. I wanted to talk to the CO first and headed for his office.
“Excuse me, sir, can I talk to you?”
“Sure, Dan.
How did it go today? Want some coffee, or a cold beer?”
“Sir, I need the beer,” I said, reaching for it as he pulled it from his mini refrigerator that we all had acquired since moving to hooches. He had known what my answer would be before he’d asked the question.
“Mr. Reynolds did good, and I have him with me tomorrow on the board. Mr. Dumas is another story. Sir, the guy can’t fly. Oh, he can move the aircraft at altitude okay, but he has trouble hovering, and his autorotation was simply a controlled crash if I hadn’t taken it. If I sign him off, he needs to be with our most seasoned ACs for a time.”
“What do you mean he can’t hover?” the major asked. I explained the drill entering and exiting the revetments as well as the hover autorotation. Giving Rick the benefit of the doubt, I told the CO that Rick might have a depth perception problem and maybe the flight surgeon should check his eyes. The old man thought this over for a minute.
“I’ll talk to Doc about this and see when his last flight physical was. It should have been just before he left flight school. Might be something in there. Okay, are you going to sign him off for copilot duty?” Oh boy, the major was laying it all on me. My responsibility.
“Well, sir, he screwed up the autorotations, but we would have walked away. He did okay flying at altitude. Yeah, I guess I’ll sign him off. I’ll see who Flight Ops is putting him up with and talk to the AC for that mission.” With that, I excused myself and went back to Flight Ops to sign him off and see who his AC for the next day would be. Ops put him up with Mike George.
Mike George’s room was across the hall from mine, and Mike was a good pilot that I had a lot of respect for.
“Hey, Mike,” I said as I entered his room. “You’re flying with Mr. Dumas tomorrow, the newbie. Watch yourself.”
“Why? You signed him off, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, but he isn’t the most stable guy when it comes to flying. His autorotations are controlled crashes and his hovering is horrible. I’ll warn you right now, there’s something about the guy. He isn’t there.”
“Thanks for the heads-up.” And Mike went back to writing his letter. Big Rick would not prove me wrong.
Chapter 26
Self-Inflicted Wounds
Working around and flying helicopters is dangerous work even when people are careful. Accidents do happen when there are mental lapses, which occur when people are tired or in a hurry. Accidents also occur when people aren’t properly trained or are inexperienced. Each day when returning to Lai Khe from a mission, if we didn’t have an opportunity to fire our guns, I would contact the controlling artillery center and request a free-fire box. Free-fire boxes were designated areas that no friendly forces were operating in. With clearance, helicopters were free to shoot up anything they saw in that box. Having obtained a clearance, I told the crew to get ready.
My copilot was a newbie, an RLO on his orientation flight. He was a first lieutenant and a rather easygoing, jovial fellow. His flying for the day was satisfactory, and we had a good day flying not only his orientation but also a resupply mission for a unit.
“Okay, crew, I’m dropping down to treetop and you can open fire when you want. Linam, there’s a water hole coming up at ten o’clock. Let’s see you nail it. Diedrich, same for you on the one at two o’clock,” I said.
Linam and Diedrich both opened fire and both were right on target. I was concentrating on Linam’s shooting when over the intercom, my copilot asked, “Hey, Dan, can I shoot my pistol out the window?”
“Sure, just be careful,” I responded. I heard the copilot’s .38 popping off. Bang, bang, BAM. Damn, that sounded loud. The intercom system allowed the pilots to speak and the entire crew could hear the conversation, or it could be switched so only selected members of the crew could hear. Suddenly mine switched to private conversation.
“Ah, Dan,” this voice called to me.
“Yeah?” I was still watching Specialist Linam’s shooting.
“I just shot the aircraft,” the voice told me. My eyes shot to the instrument panel. All appeared well.
“What the hell! How the hell did you do that?” I asked, almost laughing and looking at my newbie copilot.
“I had my arm out the window and was shooting at a water hole, and the water hole passed under us and I shot the nose.”
“Are you hit?” I looked at him, searching for blood.
“No, I’m okay and the instruments are fine.”
