Helicopters and memories…


Murphy’s post about flying in Helos reminded me of a couple of instances from my formative years in the navy.

First a basic indoctrination on helicopters… The whole thing is held together with what is called the Jesus Nut- This one nut holds the rotor system on the helo, you lose it, all you have time to say is, “Oh Jesus”. Second, helos are a collection of spare parts flying in loose formation. Third, helos don’t fly- The earth just rejects them…

Years ago, I was a crewman on the Navy HH-34 at NAS Glynco, GA (no that is NOT me in the picture, I’m MUCH better looking); we routinely flew practice SARs off the coast year round. This particular instance, we had a newby co-pilot who was in training and was a ‘little’ rough on the controls…

Well, the HH-34 had a Wright 1820 radial engine, which generated a considerable amount of “P” factor torque if one yanks on the collective. We had been out on a cold January day and practicing 10/10 hovers (10 feet at 10 Kts), after the HAC had enough of the newby’s yanking and jerking and we were about to throw up in the back, we headed back to Glynco.
After landing, we tried to open the door you see in the picture… Nope, ain’t coming open… We figured the newby’s yanking had torque the airframe and locked the door in the closed position, so…

The HAC picks the helo back up about 4 feet and drops it on the deck, still no joy… try it again, and a third and a fourth time, about this time, the tower comes over the radio, “Ah, SAR One, you got a problem there?” The HAC answers, “SAR One’s got a stuck door, I’m just trying to get it open.” The tower came back with something like, “Ah, SAR One, we can get you a can opener…”

Needless to say, the language got a little foul in the helo at that point… We ground taxied back, door still closed. When we got to our parking spot, we had to unass via the pilot’s escape hatch (the big open window in the upper right).
I got told to get the door open, so being the good Metalsmith that I was, I went to the shop and got a three pound sledgehammer and proceeded to beat the door open… From then on, when the newby was flying, we flew with the door open unless it was absolutely freezing in the back, AND carried a three pound sledge as a necessary part.

The second instance was in Hawaii about three years later. For some reason, we had an exchange with the Army helo pilots up at Fort Shafter. I went up and flew with one of the Cobra pilots who was as they say… Nucking Futs… we were the OPFOR for a helo insertion of the 25th, so this guy decides to “hide” just over a ridge line at the range on Fort Shafter…
Now this guy is just back from a third tour in Nam, so he knows the helo pretty well, so he decided to hide a little better and settles the helo into the TREES!!!! Crap is flying everywhere, you can feel and hear the blade thumps as they hit tree limbs and leaves as he carves a hole for us.

Now I’m in the gunner’s seat (forward seat), trying to get enough saliva to say something, anything… Like let me the %^&* outta here, when the pilots sighs and says, “That’ll do it. You doing okay up there?” I gibbered something, which he took as an okay…
The landing force comes in, and they go OVER us, he yanks the Cobra up out of the hole, dumps the nose and powers up about 50 feet behind the last helo in the formation, and transmits, “Guns, guns, guns.” We then do a swoop to about 1000 feet, roll 90 degrees onto the side and fall back down on top of the other two helos, with him again yelling, “guns, guns, guns” into the radio.

After that, he pulls off and we fly back to the field and land… I’m still trying to get my ass to let go of the seat, my legs are shaking like I’ve been on a weeklong drunk, and this SOB smiles and asks if I enjoyed the flight!!!!

Once I got over the terror, it wasn’t too bad…

Three weeks later, I get payback. Said Captain shows up to fly with us on an ASWEX off Barbers Point. Now you have to understand the P-3 is a rough riding sumbitch in SMOOTH air, and gets progressively worse from there…

I was playing instructor that day for a couple of new crew operators, so I was floating between stations in the tube, with the Captain observing how we tracked subs. We descended to do some MAD trapping (yank and bank at 200 feet), and I take the Captain up to the cockpit and park him on the Radar cabinet behind the pilot to watch how we do it.

I go back to my job, and about 10 minutes later, here comes the Captain, and interesting shade of white and green, he goes back to the galley and sits down and straps in…

A few minutes later, as we climb out, I walk up to the flight station to see what is going on…

Both pilots and the flight engineer are still chuckling, it appears the Captain never realized we were at 200 feet, with both outboard engines in the bag…

The 3P (junior pilot) was flying and not using altitude hold, so we were dipping a little in the turns, and he was racking the aircraft around pretty good (50+ degree banks). Apparently the Captain asked what the wing span was, did the math for wing clearance and decided he was probably going to die before the flight was over… Plus the cockpit was hot, and the FE had a little problem with flatulence…

When we landed at Barbers, the Captain told me we were all %^&* crazy, unsafe in the air, and he was NEVER coming back and was going to make sure none of the other helo pilots would fly with us as he stalked off the aircraft…

I ‘LOVE’ payback…

Comments

Helicopters and memories… — 7 Comments

  1. I remember when I was in the army and riding in a UH-1D from a National guard unit, during operation Ozark Defender II. I was a casualty and the crew chief of the bird I was flying in used the same expression, a series of parts flying in close formation. The scared the bejeebers out of me, but he thought it was really cute. I had a talk with one of the ref’s and got him declared a casualty for the next phase, and he was being triaged by yours truly. The Captain was a decent guy for being an officer and a DR, and let me paint the crew chief with mercurachrome for a “scalp laceration” I had fun…..

  2. It was true in those days… Parts fell off on a regular basis because of the vibration of that old 1820… 🙂

  3. I’ve been invited to go up in the PPD helicopter, but declined. Vomiting on duty is not my idea of fun.

  4. “Jesus Nut’ – Har!

    Most of my rides were pretty cool, the one I wrote about made even cooler by the misfortunes of my buddy and the resulting foto op.

    I think I only had one personally that turned out not so good for me, but that was in 29 Palms. Everything goes wrong there.

    Pilots can be some crazy sick mammer jammers, but there is nothing more beautiful than when you really need ’em to see/hear them comin, that’s for sure.

  5. Murph, 29 stumps is NEVER fun… Of course you know that. Ironically, 2 years of flying the 34, we never had a problem, 6 months of the “new” H-2A, lost two combining transmissions and one tail rotor= three real autorotations. That influenced my decision to get into something where the wing didn’t rotate over my head 🙂

  6. Remember the F8U Corsair with the variable incidence wing? It had that nice big bolt that held the hydraulic ram to the actual wing? I saw a plane captain on the deck showing one of those from the catwalk to a smart assed jg as he was on the cat and two seconds from launch. He turned instantly white faced! After his trap, his “assholiness” disappeared when he realized that bolt could be made to go awol somehow!