Chapter 24
Shanghai
I t was the end of November, and I was looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner the next day. When I came in from flying, the orderly room clerk stopped me.
“Mr. Cory, I have an RFO for you,” he said, handing me a piece of onionskin paper. Clerks typed everything on the original paper with carbon copies underneath, five copies. The world seemed to work just fine with a manual typewriter and onionskin paper, five copies. The RFO was a request for orders, which came from higher headquarters, directing the receiving unit to prepare transfer orders in accordance with the instructions on the RFO. This was my ticket home.
“Yes!” I said with a fist pump. “Where am I going?”
“Sir, you are to report to Fort Ord, California,” he said with a smile. Fort Ord is located in Monterey, on the coast. It’s beautiful there. This was a plum assignment. God had smiled on me.
I am blessed , I thought as I walked into our little officers’ club. “Bartender, set ’em up. I’m buying. Give the rooster a scotch.” About fifteen pilots were sitting there and joined me in the celebration. The rooster was already on the bar, pecking at his glass.
“Hey, Dan. What are we celebrating?” asked Mike. “You find a woman that will sleep with you?”
“Screw you. No, I’ve found an entire town of women. California surfer girls. My RFO came in, and I’m going to Fort Ord,” I said, raising my beer. A cheer went up, and comments about how lucky I was.
“How the hell did you pull those orders? Just about everyone goes to Mother Rucker or Fort Wolters for flight instructor duty,” Hess interjected. He had just dropped his request for an extension.
“I know, but these just came in. Anyone know what it’s like back there?” I asked. From the back of the room came a voice.
“Yeah, it sucks,” Lieutenant Weed spoke up. We had tolerated each other and been professional, but that was the extent of our relationship.
“Why do you say that, sir?” I asked, keeping it professional.
“I lived near there before I joined the Army. My first assignment was as a training officer there.” To me, that explained a lot about his leadership ability. “When I got there,” he continued, “I come to find that it’s the basic training base for the West Coast. They have very few aircraft and very little flying time, since basic training doesn’t teach airmobile operations. They only get that when they go to AIT. The surrounding towns are Monterey, Pacific Beach and Carmel, all very expensive. High school kids drive Jags and Mercedes while schoolteachers drive Fords and Chevys. You’ll be scraping by on warrant officer pay. Oh, and forget about getting a flying job. Warrant officers there are generally used as mess officers, since they have so few flying positions there. You’ll be placed in charge of overseeing about five or six company mess halls and will only fly on weekends or after hours to get your required hours. Good luck with that assignment,” he concluded.
Now I didn’t know if I should trust Lieutenant Weed’s words or not, but it certainly put a damper on the celebration. I was going to have to do some research on this. I’d joined the Army to fly, not work in mess hall management.
For the next couple of days, I asked around about Fort Ord among other pilots, not only in our outfit but also in other units that I came across. It appeared after a week that Lieutenant Weed had spoken the truth. I was headed to a shit sandwich assignment.
I went to see the major to see if I could get my orders changed.
“Excuse me, sir. I’m on orders to Fort Ord and—”
“Yeah, I know, and good luck with that. You’re too good of a pilot to be stuck in that place. You’re going to waste your time there,” he interrupted.
“Well, sir, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Can you change those orders to send me to Rucker or Savannah?” I asked.
“Shit, Cory, do I have a magic wand? No, I can’t change your orders. If I could, I would have as soon as they came in. No way,” he said. I’m screwed . “Now wait one. There is a way you can change your orders, however,” he added.
Now I was excited. “There is? How?”
“You can extend for six months and stay in Nam.” He was grinning. Did he have something to do with my RFO? I wondered.
“Sir, you’re kidding. Hell! I’ve already had my cherry busted, had a door gunner wounded, had a hydraulic failure and a compressor stall. Add to that, I’m over thirteen hundred hours flying here.” I didn’t mention the aircraft that had gone down with the pitch change horn failure, the one I’d almost ridden in. He knew that was on the score card without me mentioning it.
“Yeah, you’ve racked up some time, but that’s the only choice you have. Think about it.” And he headed to the bar.
Seldom did we discuss business with the CO in a formal setting. He and his XO were easy to talk to, as were most of the RLOs now in the unit. My platoon leader came over and dragged up a chair as I sat at the bar.
“I hear you’re going to go to Fort Ord,” Captain Beauchamp said. He was a new guy, having been with us about two months now. Easy going and very likable. He was an artillery officer from New York City. He wanted to open a haberdashery when he got out. I had to ask him what a haberdashery was.
“A men’s tailor shop” was his response, as if everyone knew what that was. I bought my jeans off the rack.
“Yeah. I guess the only way of getting out of it is to extend my tour by six months.”
“Well, why not?” he asked.
“Sir, I’ve been pressing my luck. Between Night Hunter Killer missions, combat assaults and all the other stuff—”
“Well, extend for some outfit that doesn’t do this crazy shit. Extend for a VIP flight out of Saigon. Your dad is there, isn’t he?”
“Sir, I never thought of that. Shit, I could live good, but I don’t know. I probably wouldn’t do well with all the spit and polish that goes with one of those outfits. I also don’t care to be around field grades that think they’re too good to be with the common grunt,” I said, thinking back to when Mike and I had been asked to leave the “O” Club with Dad that time.
“What did you want to fly when you came out of flight school?” he asked.
“Truthfully, sir, I wanted to fly medivac,” I told him.
“God, you’re nuts. Why?” he asked.
“Well, they don’t fly formations, which, before I came here, I didn’t like.”
“But you do now, and you’re one of the best in formation that I’ve seen.”
“I had a good teacher when I first got here. What he taught me, I’ve been passing on to you.”
“Why else were you looking at medevac?”
“I like helping guys. Grunts need someone who’s willing to get in and get them, especially when they’re in bad shape. I just thought medevac would be a good fit for me. Besides, nurses are with medevac units,” I added with a smile.
“Well, extend for the Forty-Fourth Med Brigade, where all the medevac birds are located,” he instructed.
“I hadn’t thought of that. Sure as shit wouldn’t extend for helping the Vietnamese.”
“Yeah, why not?” he asked.
“Sir, I’m convinced that these people could give a rat’s ass about who the government is. They want to raise their families and grow their rice in peace and quiet. They’d be just as happy to see our asses out of here and the Commies in charge as long as they leave them alone. Look how often we get hit with mortars or rockets and they say nothing to us but didi out of here at fifteen hundred or thereabouts. They know it’s coming, but will they tell us? No way!” Thinking out loud, I added, “Now I would come back to help our grunts. God knows they need it. I could go home on a thirty-day leave and come back to go there. Thanks, sir. I’ll do that right now.” I finished off my beer and headed for the orderly room to fill out the paperwork.
What I didn’t hear was the conversation between the major and Captain Beauchamp. It was something to the effect of “Okay, we got him to extend. Now we just need to get him to change his mind and extend to stay here.” At this point, the US Army was running out of pilots. Flight schools were at capacity, but between normal tours being up and guys getting out, as well as crew losses, the demand was beyond the supply of pilots. We had twenty aircraft in the unit and were supposed to have forty-one pilots, barely enough pilots to put two pilots in the cockpit of each at one time. We had on hand enough pilots to launch only seventeen aircraft. We had never gotten a mission requiring all twenty aircraft, the most being sixteen at one time, which usually accounted for two in scheduled maintenance at the same time and the others down for unplanned maintenance.
“Okay, how do we get Cory to extend for this unit?” That was the question, and Captain Wehr, our XO, came up with an answer: make Cory the unit instructor pilot. Our unit had one instructor pilot, who was also rotating home and out of the Army at the end of the month. We had a new pilot that had attended the instructor course right out of flight school but was so new he wasn’t even being considered for AC. A new instructor pilot hadn’t been chosen, and there were limited choices. Had to be an aircraft commander, and preferably someone who’d previously been a flight instructor at one of the flight schools. However, the major put that last requirement in the toilet, if we had a toilet.
“This isn’t flight school. I want an instructor that can teach how we fly in combat and who has done it. Besides, we have no former instructor pilots.”
A couple of days later, I noticed I was on the flight schedule with the major. I was down as aircraft commander, which I thought a bit odd since he was also an aircraft commander now. Our takeoff time was 1300 hours, the middle of the day, and that was odd. No mission information, and that was odd. This whole thing was odd. When we got to the aircraft, the crew chief and gunner were there and waiting. There was a marmite can in the back of the aircraft and I asked what it was for. Marmite cans kept food hot or cold, the Army version of an ice chest.
“Don’t know, sir. The CO called down and told me to pick it up in the orderly room and bring it to the aircraft,” the crew chief said. This was the CO’s aircraft.
“What’s in it?” I asked.
“Don’t know. I didn’t open it, but it’s heavy.”
About this time, Major Saunders walked up and climbed into the aircraft, taking the copilot seat. I had already performed the preflight, so no need to delay.
“Ah, sir, can you tell me where we’re going and what we’re doing?” I asked.
“Yeah, I can. When we get there,” he said with a smile.
He started the aircraft and I got our clearances to depart to the north. The CO was flying the aircraft and took us to the Special Forces camp up Highway 13 with its dirt airstrip at Chon Thanh. He landed us there and turned to the crew.
“Okay, guys, hop out and take the marmite with you. Mr. Cory and I are going to be doing some work.” As the crew got out, the marmite chest was opened and two very cold sodas came out. One was handed to me and the other to the major, who opened his with a smile. “Let’s go shoot some autorotations. You’re first.”
I took the controls and set myself up for a schoolhouse by-the-book autorotation, which I might add was flawlessly executed with a perfect touchdown.
“My turn,” he said, taking the controls. “Enjoy your soda.”
We had taken beer with us on previous flights and drank a cold one during the day on missions, but only when we were on the ground and waiting. Usually one beer per man, and if we had a half case on board, we’d share it with the grunts on the first lift going into an LZ. They loved it, and our unit got a reputation for being the one that took care of the grunts. Beer was cheap and it brightened up their lives just a bit. On resupply missions into hover holes, it was just as important to get the mail and beer in as it was the water and ammo in our book.
Coming around, the major executed his autorotation but had a bit of a slide at the end. He asked me how I had no slide. I explained that when I made the flare at seventy-five feet, I popped just a touch of collective to the flare, which cut my forward momentum just a touch. He said he wanted to go around and do it again. This time he nailed it.
“Damn, Dan, if that didn’t work. They didn’t teach that in flight school. Okay, take me around for a low-level autorotation.” He turned the aircraft over to me. I took us out low-level and came back on final. There was a fifty-five-gallon drum on the side of the runway about halfway down.
“See that drum, sir? I’ll put us down next to it,” I said while concentrating on my flying. Cutting the throttle, I eased the nose up and glided us to the drum, stopping midship of it.
“My turn.” And he took it. Around we went, and he executed the autorotation but was short of the drum. “What the hell? What did I do wrong?”
“Sir, you did nothing wrong, but you didn’t milk the collective to extend your glide.” And I went into an explanation of how to do it. Around we went again, and he did it better but with a slide, and long this time.
As we were sitting on the strip, bringing the throttle up to full power, he waved to the crew chief, who was lounging under a tree. He held up two fingers, and without a word, the crew chief retrieved two more sodas. It was hot, and we were sweating out any liquid we were taking in.
“Okay, show me loss of tail rotor at a hover. I heard you’ve shown some of the others this technique,” he said.
“Okay, sir, but this isn’t a school-approved maneuver. Me and some of the other ACs thought this through after we saw what happened a couple of weeks ago when Chalk One lost his tail rotor in the LZ,” I said.
“Let’s hear it,” he said as he sipped some soda.
“Okay, you’re at a hover and the tail rotor fails. The nose is going to start coming around to the left, and if you do nothing, it only accelerates in that direction until you’re in an uncontrollable spin, which will result in a rollover when you do hit the ground. You have two choices. The first is to try to maintain the aircraft while pulling power and climbing out as you’re spinning until you get some airspeed to help streamline the aircraft and let you fly it as best you can to a runway for a running landing. Not the best of situations. The second is to stay in the LZ. As the aircraft begins to turn left, roll the throttle off, but don’t chop it as you would for a hovering autorotation as that would accelerate your rotation. With the power coming off and pulling up on the collective, the aircraft won’t have the power to turn the nose or keep itself in the air. You’ll land with a turning nose, but the chance of a rollover is greatly reduced. If it does lean into a rollover, move the cyclic to the right to tip the aircraft to that side. The key is recognizing quickly that you have a tail rotor failure and reacting just as quick,” I explained.
“Okay, show me,” he said, just as calm as could be. Meanwhile I was about to shit in my pants.
“Sir, you know I could screw this one up,” I said timidly.
“You won’t,” he said as he gave me a thumbs-up to get to a hover. As I got to a hover, he jammed the left pedal and the nose started around. Shit. I reacted, and we set down with just one bounce.
“Told you you wouldn’t fuck it up,” he said. “My turn.” And we executed it with him on the controls and me pushing the pedal, although I didn’t jam it to the stops as he had done to me.
I was feeling a bit cocky now. “Sir, you ever done a zero-airspeed one-eighty autorotation?” I asked.
“What the hell is that?” he asked with surprise on his face.
“It would be easier to demonstrate if you’ll allow me,” I said without looking at him. How far was I going to be able to push him? I pulled in power and started climbing. “Suppose you’re at an altitude of a thousand feet and have an engine failure. The only clearing is behind you. You have two options. The first is to fly a hundred and eighty degrees and hope you make it back to that clearing, but as you’re making that turn, you’re losing altitude rapidly, and unless you’re trading altitude for airspeed, you may not make it back to the clearing in a low-level autorotation. The second is to trade airspeed off for altitude while you make a pedal turn and then execute a normal autorotation.”
He looked at me as if I was nuts. I flew the aircraft over the runway and passed it at one thousand feet. When it was behind us, I chopped the throttle and immediately raised the nose of the aircraft, bleeding off the airspeed to zero, but our altitude stayed at one thousand feet. As we passed through ten knots, I kicked in a left pedal turn, bringing the nose of the aircraft around 180 degrees. Our rotor rpms were going down slowly as I then pushed the nose of the aircraft forward and put us into a fifteen-hundred-feet-per-minute dive, pointed right at the runway. Rotor rpm was building rapidly, as was airspeed, and I pulled in some collective to maintain it in the correct operating range. As we were operating the rotor in the green, the landing point was where it should be. I raised the nose and reduced our airspeed, which was at one hundred and ten in the dive, to sixty knots and executed a normal autorotation, setting the bird down as pretty as I pleased. The major was just staring wide-eyed at me.
“Where the hell did you learn that?” he asked. “Surely not in flight school.”
“No, sir. I met a guy that was a test pilot at the Hughes aircraft factory once, and he showed me the maneuver, along with a zero-airspeed three-sixty autorotation,” I said.
“A what?” he asked with a shocked look.
“A zero-airspeed three-sixty autorotation. You do it the same way but just rotate the aircraft three hundred and sixty degrees. It’s best if you have a bit more altitude, but you can do it from a thousand feet as well. This guy did one back in sixty-six up north under fire. He said he was at about twelve hundred feet when two .51-cals opened up on him. He pulled up short right away as he could see he was going to get hit, and he did. He immediately zeroed out the airspeed and chopped the throttle and went into the pedal turn. They stopped shooting ’cause they thought they had hit him mortally. As he got into his dive, he brought the power back and went contour over the trees. Must have pissed the gooks off, but at least they stopped shooting at him,” I said. “He told me he read about pilots in World War I doing something similar when shot at by ground crews. Those pilot would abruptly pull into a stall, roll over into a spin, a classic split S maneuver, and then a spin down to a thousand feet before pulling out.”
“Have you ever done it, this zero-airspeed three-sixty autorotation?” he asked. Oh, the moment of truth , I thought.
“Yes, sir,” I answered. No denying it. I wasn’t a liar, and I was sure he had flown with a right seat pilot that I’d demonstrated this to and he had been told about it.
“Well, let’s not just sit here. Show me,” he said, tightening his seat belt. Off we went and climbed to altitude. Everything came off fine just like a ride at Disneyland, and the old man was grinning like a Cheshire Cat when we got to the ground.
“Very nice, Dan. Let’s get the crew and head for home,” he said, and we did. Kind of a fun couple of hours just being able to hone skills.
Two days later, we were at the club after a long day of flying. I was told that tomorrow would be a stand-down day for me, so I was working on my third beer when Captain Armstrong and Captain Beauchamp came over and dragged up chairs. Captain Armstrong was just a great guy and one of the few black pilots in the outfit. We had two, the other being First Lieutenant “Hobie” Hicks, also a fine man. As he and Captain Beauchamp sat down, he took my glass of beer.
“Let me touch that up for you a bit.” To my beer, he added a large shot of Jack Daniels. Now I was never a whiskey drinker, so this surprised me a bit. But, hey, it was my platoon leader, and I wasn’t about to refuse a drink. This was a bit odd. We had another, and another, with the conversation revolving around my flight with the major two days ago. Both were asking questions about the flight.
After about an hour of this, the company clerk came up to me in the Officers’ Club and asked me to sign some papers.
“What’s this for?” I asked with a slight slur and blurry eyes. I was becoming as drunk as our rooster who frequented the club each night and was fed scotch. Damn rooster would not drink beer. Expensive taste.
“Oh, it’s just some paperwork I need your signature on for your extension,” he said. And I signed it without another thought. I thought I had submitted everything. As he left, the RLOs excused themselves, slapping each other on the back and laughing their asses off. Two nights later, I found out what was so funny. The major wanted all the pilots in the club for a meeting.
“Okay, gentlemen, I have an announcement to make. First let me introduce two newbies that arrived today. Warrant Officer Rick Dumas joins us along with Warrant Officer John Reynolds, both just out of flight school. Welcome, gentlemen,” he said as he pointed at them. “Both of you will have an opportunity to fly with our new instructor pilot very soon. Listen to what he has to teach you, because he’s going to take you above flight school training and teach you combat flying. You both will be flying with him for the next month, one each day, and on the other day you’ll be flying with another aircraft commander who’s going to be teaching you as well, so you can learn from all of them. They’ve all been flying a minimum of four months and all have over five hundred hours in-country. Learn well and learn fast.”
Who the hell was the new instructor pilot? I wondered. The major went on, “Sit down, newbies. In addition, I’m happy to announce that one of our chickens has decided to stay in the Coop. Mr. Cory has graciously modified his extension to remain with us instead of going to a medivac unit. Thank you, Dan.”
“Wait one!” I yelled in shock. “Sir, I didn’t change my extension. What are you talking about?” I was trying to be respectful and noticed that most of the other pilots were laughing, to include Captain Armstrong and Captain Beauchamp.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Cory, but you most certainly did,” the major said with all the seriousness of a criminal prosecutor. “Two nights ago, you signed the papers to change your extension from a medevac assignment to remain with us. You did it right here with Captain Armstrong and Captain Beauchamp as witnesses. Isn’t that right?” he asked, looking right at them with a very straight face.
With equally straight faces, they stood in unison and said, “Yes, sir.” And then they broke down laughing.
“Sir, they were getting me drunk with Jack Daniels when your clerk pushed those papers in my face,” I stated.
Maintaining his prosecutor’s face, he insisted, “Now, Mr. Cory, we all know that you’re not a whiskey drinker, and I will not have you trash the honest reputation of these fine officers. Does everyone agree with me that we know Mr. Cory is not a whiskey drinker? Whoever denies that fact, let him stand and speak.” No one came to my defense, and the major was now having trouble keeping a straight face. My goose was cooked.
“Hey, sir, one question,” one of the pilots sounded off. “Who is the new instructor pilot?” Silence. A long pregnant pause as the CO stared at the floor. Slowly he looked up and studied the room, with his eyes falling finally on me.
“Mr. Cory is our new instructor pilot. Congratulations, Dan,” he said. The room went into hysterics. For the rest of the night, I didn’t have to buy beer as everyone was feeding it to me and all having a good laugh at my expense. Some even offered to buy me, and the rooster, a shot of Jack Daniels. Bastards!