Free Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond by Robert F. Curtis

Tennessee and back, and have nine days with my wife and son in the middle. Plus, because of their flight scheduling, I would have one night on the airline in Hong Kong between flights, not a bad deal anytime but especially nice in war time. A few phone calls later, I found out that I would have to buy my ticket in person at the Air Vietnam Airlines counter in Da Nang, about 60 miles and one small mountain pass to the south of Phu Bai.
    Normally, getting to Da Nang from Phu Bai was as easy as finding another pilot who had a day off and wanted to do some shopping at the big Post exchange (PX) there. Then you went to Playtex Ops and signed out a Chinook for the day and went, taking a jeep with you in the back for transportation when you got there. The advantages of a big aircraft … but this time it was not so easy.
    There were four different models of Chinook in Vietnam, the “A”, “B”, “Baby C,” and “Super C.” The A and B were older model aircraft with two fuel tanks and much less range than either of the two C models we flew with their six fuel tanks. Playtex had both Baby C’s and Super C’s, the difference being the Super C engines produced far more power than the ones in the Baby C. Everything has a price, and the price was that the engines on the Baby were good for 1,200 hours between changes, while because of the higher stress on them, the engines on the Super were only good for 300 hours.
    The stress turned out much worse than the Army thought. The engines on the Super C weren’t making it to 300 hours; instead they were blowing up before it was time to change them. So, all Super C’s were grounded until the engines could be replaced with the weaker, but more reliable engines on Baby C’s. Unfortunately, Playtex had ten Super C’s out of a total of sixteen aircraft, leaving only six of the Baby C’s for missions until the engines on the Supers could be changed, bringing them back to Baby C’s. Optional flying was temporarily ended.
    The second choice for getting to Da Nang was the Bus Run. As the name implied, Chinooks from one of the three companies in the 159th Assault Support Battalion flew a daily mission that was exactly like a city bus route. Ten hours long, the Bus Run went from Landing Zone (LZ) to LZ all over I Corps, including Da Nang, picking up and dropping passengers at set stops along the way. But the engine problem stopped the Bus Run, too.
    Other than trying to hitch a ride on a truck, a very long and dangerous trip, the only option left was to go over to the base ops room at Phu Bai airfield and wait for someone to pass through on their way down to Da Nang. Having flown over 100 hours in last 30 days, company Ops gave me the day off and I bummed a ride in the company jeep for the mile over to the Phu Bai airfield.
    The Base Ops Department was doing the usual paperwork when I came into their small office. When I finally got their attention, they told me to talk to the pilot of an Air America light twin-engine, fixed-wing parked on the ramp out in front of the building. I thanked them and walked through the front door, out onto the concrete ramp.
    I could see a pilot in a white shirt studying a map in the cockpit. I walked to the right side and yelled into the open door, “You going to Da Nang.”
    As the pilot turned toward me, I was surprised to see the oldest man I had ever seen at the controls of an aircraft sitting there. He must have been 70—a 70-year-old active pilot.
    With a smile on his very lined face he said, “Sure am. You want a ride?”
    When I replied yes, he motioned for me to climb in. I strapped myself into the right seat as he watched, smiling all the time.
    Looking at the Playtex patch on my flight suit pocket, he asked, “enjoy flying Chinooks?”
    “Yes, sir. Great aircraft. they’re a lot of fun,” I replied.
    He smiled at that. “We’ll get going in a minute,” he said, turning back to his chart.
    In 1971, at Playtex and all the other aviation