I have a lot of time, both military and civilian, riding in those contraptions.
Here in my area, I know and have know most of the chopper pilots. Over the last 30+ years, 7-8 of them met their demise. I considered all of them be be great pilots.
My father browbeat the army into sending him to flight school in the late 50’s (he lined up a civilian job, and threatened to resign if he wasn’t sent to flight school). Late 50’s, early 60’s, the Army required it’s pilots to qualify in both fixed-wing and helicopters, so he did both. He always claimed to be the first instrument qualified helicopter pilot in the Arny. Lot’s of great stories about flight schools, and the instructors. He wrote a bit of a memoir a few years before his death- all quite interesting.
Dad was a very calm individual- obviously spent most of his flight time in airplanes :).
Traffic was stopped on the freeway. Talked to the truck driver parked next to me. He was an ex-helicopter pilot who had failed his physical. Based on CB evidence, he claimed that the IQ of the average truck driver was equal to the outdoor temperature.
Good post - been working with rotorcraft since 1980 - have seen an H-53 do a loop - damndest thing you ever saw - ‘course it was a very BIG loop....
You guys are all amazing. I love to fly, but am scared to death of helos. I am so glad you are all home, and I can’t thank you all enough for doing what we are all afraid to do, especially the guys who pick up our wounded, unarmed and with painted targets.
Snicker.
You would be totally amazed!
I am old enough to remember and to have laughed at “Air Wolf”. It was a program about a ‘supersonic-capable’ help. When I started detailing all of the impossibilities of this, I just gave up and switched channels.
Fixed wing aircraft work even when parts fall off, rotary works until parts fail. Fixed wings glide, rotary don’t.
as to fixed-wing VS. fling-wing.....Give me the fling-wing every time!!!!....(if nothing else, its good for the heart rate and adrenal gland)
Had a neighbor when I was a kid that was a 7th air cav huey pilot....then later on instructed at Fort Rucker. Ray Cole. Coolest Dad on the block. Could whip me in chess within 25-30 moves with his knights....everytime.
Dad flew Caribou in VN, then came back and learned to fly rotary so he could be XO of the warrant battalion at Rucker. We lived across from the parade field, and as kids we would count the helos in the graduation formation flights across the parade field.
I’ll put in a plug here for a cool organization, the Army Aviation Heritage Foundation. They do some awesome airshows with lots of rotary wing elements. Recommended.
They’re based at the airport in Hampton, GA, next to Atlanta Raceway (the NASCAR track, whatever the official name is). They do shows all over the place. A buddy who is involved with the group says they are the 3rd most requested air show group, behind the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds, but ahead of the Golden Knights.
Here’s a helicopter story you might enjoy:
The Loop
In mid October 1968, sometime during the brief stand down Project Delta took in Nha Trang between the Quan Loi deployment and the deployment to An Hoa, several of us recon team leaders were invited to go for a demonstration ride with one of the helicopter pilots we knew in Nha Trang. The pilot’s helicopter unit had recently traded in their old UH-1Ds for brand new UH-1Hs and he was anxious to show off his new bird. I won’t reveal the pilot’s name or unit and you’ll soon understand why.
Four of us met the pilot and his crew one morning at the unit’s helicopter revetments, boarded a brand new UH-1H, and away we went. The pilot predicated the flight by stating, “To compare this new H model to a D model is like comparing a Ferrari with a dump truck, now let me show you what this baby can do.” We made several practice insertions and lift offs on LZs we found in the mountains around Nha Trang, and we were quite impressed with the new bird’s capabilities. After about thirty minutes of flying around the Nha Trang hillsides, we flew back to Nha Trang and dropped off two of the recon team leaders who had seen enough already, and we took off again.
But this time, the pilot flew us out past Hon Tre Island and well out into the South China Sea, and he did this to make sure there would be no witnesses to what he intended to do. The pilot told us over the intercom that with the increased capability of this new Huey, he was sure he could “loop” the aircraft. When he told us that, with me not knowing the capabilities and limitations of a UH-1H, I thought, “That sure sounds exciting.” But when I looked over and saw the unmistakable expression of abject terror in the crew chief’s face, I knew then it was going to be not only exciting, it was going to be really exciting.
The pilot swore us all to eternal silence for what we were about to do, had the door gunner and crew chief pull in the M-60s and tie them down securely, and made sure we were all belted down tightly. Then he said, “Watch this,” (No, he didn’t say, “Hold my beer, watch this,” as is usually said before such stunts.) and he took that UH-1H up to about 5,000 feet and looped it, or at least I think he looped it.
The whole thing was probably over in less than half a minute, and for most of the event my memory is a blur. My memory isn’t blurred because of the forty years of time that’s passed since then, it’s because the incident was actually blurred. I have a clear memory of the pilot taking the Huey up to about 5,000 feet altitude and our airspeed increasing to well over 120 knots, but then it starts to get blurry. I remember the pilot putting the Huey into a steeper climb than I ever thought possible in a Huey; I remember being upside down; I remember the sensation of falling like a rock while upside down, and I remember hearing the engine RPM revving to a speed I had never heard before. I’m not sure how far we fell while upside down before the falling sensation changed to feet first, but I’m pretty sure we fell through most of our 5,000 ft of altitude before we finally regained stable flight.
As soon as we had leveled out and were skimming along across the wave-tops, the pilot’s calm voice came over the intercom and said, “See, I told you I could loop this baby,” as if any of us had ever doubted him. I glanced over at the crew chief again and saw that he was petrified with fear, and I didn’t want anyone to think Mrs. Taylor’s idiot son could ever be frightened by such a mundane stunt as looping a Huey, so I keyed my mic and said, “Damn, that was fun! Let’s do it again.” When the crew chief, obviously the only completely sane person on board, heard what I said over the intercom, I could tell he was seriously contemplating exiting the aircraft without benefit of a parachute. He had already determined he stood a much better chance of surviving the impact with the water and a swim back to the mainland in shark infested water than he did of surviving another loop in that Huey.
The pilot answered me with, “Nah, it looks like this bird needs a little maintenance. I can’t get this pesky Master Caution light to quit flashing.” It was then that I noticed a bump-shudder-whine-thump noise coming from somewhere in the engine and or drive train that didn’t sound too healthy. We limped back into Nha Trang, parked that tired little bird in its revetment (talk about being rode hard and put away wet), and adjourned to the Delta Hilton for post-op libations.
By about the fifth round of Budweiser, we had all stopped arguing and agreed that the pilot had indeed looped the Huey. We had been on a heading of roughly 90 degrees, climbed steeply, pointed the nose of the aircraft backward toward 270 degrees, and then fell through the arc to a heading once again of 90 degrees. Some of us thought “loop” might not have been adequately descriptive. Maybe tumbled, maybe flipped, but looped was just too smooth a sounding word to properly describe what we had just done in a UH-1H.
The pilot probably made aviation history that day, but he could never tell anyone about it. Until now, I’m pretty sure no one else on board that helicopter that day has ever talked about the flight with anyone who wasn’t there. The pilot, now retired, went on to a long and distinguished career in Army Aviation, and I doubt if he would want a story going around relating to his wild young days as a Lieutenant in Vietnam when he would push an aircraft far past its maximum capability and think nothing of it, so I will never, under any circumstances, divulge the pilot’s name.
Yes, I know; I’ve just broken my word and revealed a secret I swore I would keep forever, but it’s been over forty years now and I didn’t give up the pilot’s name, so that should be worth something.
DJ Taylor