Enemy mortar damage grounded half of Apache Troop’s Hueys and Cobras and one of its Loaches. The AMOC, Captain Stiner, and his maintenance section worked twenty-four hours straight to get us back in the air. It led to Captain Stiner’s receiving the only Distinguished Service Cross I ever knew to be awarded for noncombat action.
Other than being a maintenance officer, Captain Stiner was also a certified test pilot. He sometimes went out to fly X-Ray in Snakes when he got bored with being stuck in the repair shed. He decided to test one of the repaired Cobras by taking it up and flying around the pattern.
He got it up with no trouble and was scooting along the downwind leg of the long airstrip when suddenly his tail rotor came off in-flight. It whizzed past him in the air like a Frisbee.
Losing a helicopter’s tail rotor was something like dropping a wing on a standard airplane. It virtually assured you of a crash. Instead of panicking, however, Captain Stiner put all his experience to work. He used throttle, cyclic, and collective in combination to overcome the loss of countertorque and balance normally provided by the tail rotor. He actually landed the Cobra in the cleared field of fire about one hundred yards from the base without additional damage to either the aircraft or himself. I heard it was the first time such a feat had ever been accomplished.
Captain Stiner stood by the helicopter nonchalantly munching on a candy bar when a truck came out to pull the Cobra back to the maintenance shed. That guy had cool. I wished I had cool like that.