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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