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

tough in its own right. It was an observation aircraft with a pilot and observer flying seated in tandem for controlling artillery. He told of putting the aircraft into a tight turn over people on the ground and lowering down a bucket on a rope with a message in it. He talked of dirt strips and bad weather in Germany and all the other things pilots talk to other pilots about—hot landing zones, strips too short or too narrow and snow and ice on the runway and cheap copilots who wouldn’t buy you a drink. He was still talking as we taxied up to base operations at the Air Force Base (AFB) in Da Nang.
    As the engines went quiet, I reached up to take off my headset. One last transmission came through before I took it off—he looked over at me with a huge grin and said, “Well, son, looks like we cheated death again, didn’t we? Luck and superstition, that’s all it is.”
    As I walked away from the aircraft where he was still shutting things down, it struck me that he was right. When you break the ground and go flying in war zones, you really are risking death every time. And while you try to keep the odds on your side by following what you have been taught, by being orthodox and obeying the holy rules of flying, in the end, it is only luck and superstition that keep you alive.
    I petted my aircraft as I boarded, and said those words after the rotors stopped on every flight for the rest of my career, “Cheated death again. Luck and superstition, that’s all it is.”

7
    SURVIVAL INSTRUMENTS
    I CORPS, VIETNAM ■ FEBRUARY 1971
    During the height of the war in Vietnam, the Army could not afford the extra time to train pilots to fly only on the flight instruments to the level that the Air Force and Navy and Marines did. The Army needed bodies to fill the seats of the thousands of helicopters throughout the country. In the other services, newly minted aviators had a “standard” instrument ticket, meaning that they could fly during instrument meteorological conditions (IMC) under instrument flight rules (IFR) anywhere in the world, a necessary thing for pilots flying off ships and airfields at night and under all weather conditions. Army helicopter pilots, on the other hand, had a “tactical” instrument ticket, meaning that they could not fly IFR anywhere except in a war zone. Most of the time, this worked well because nearly all missions were conducted in daylight and under visual meteorological conditions (VMC). But sometimes…
    T he missions didn’t stop when the monsoon clouds and rain brought the weather down to near zip, because the war did not stop. the missions had to be done, they just took longer since the aircraft had to hover along, at times just above the trees, to deliver their external loads of food, ammunition, and even water in the midst of low clouds, rain, and fog. Instead of flying high above the reach of small arms, we flew low, down among the trees where the NVA might hear us or even see us but where we were usually long gone before they could react.
    No one ever told us that there was such a thing as “mission categories,” i.e., routine, urgent, and mandatory, and that you could refuse missions. There were just missions and you had to try them, no matter the weather, enemy situation, or anything else. You had to try because the grunts and the gunners knew you would come and so you always did, hovering along in the rain and fog if you had to. Sometimes you might not make it, but you had to try.
    This morning over the green coastal low lands, the clouds had lifted into a high overcast. It felt odd to be so high after weeks of monsoon rain, flying to the PZ instead of more or less hovering slowly forward over the trees. In the right seat of the CH-47C Chinook, the 21-year-old WO1 copilot that was me shivered slightly from the cool, damp air that came in around the sliding window on my side. It was supposed to be hot in Vietnam, but with November monsoon rain at 800 feet, it was probably in the