By Guy Miller

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“SO, KENNY.  What does that castle on your uniform mean?”

I was speaking to an Army guy, working on his beer, at the bar I just recently inherited from my late Uncle Nick, called the FARRP.  Uncle Nick had opened the place in Fayetteville, NC, just outside of Fort Bragg, after he got cancer and had to leave the Army.  He had spent many years in Vietnam flying helicopters, and his friends here in this bar told me his cancer came from some chemical he was exposed to while he was there.

By the way, my name is Gil Edwards, and I know nothing about the Army or Vietnam, which is why I keep asking these guys questions.  I had learned that Kenny was known in the Army as “Captain Wayne.”   He always sat at the same place in the bar with a couple of his Army buddies, who were all very patient with my endless questions.  Guess it was because they had really liked my Uncle Nick.

“Well, Gil,” Kenny replied.  “That castle is the insignia of the Corps of Engineers, which is my branch in the Army, just like Major Williams here is in Military Intelligence and Chief Rod there is in Aviation.”

“But I thought you told me you were Cav,” I said, puzzled.

“I was commissioned in Armor branch and spent my first years as a lieutenant in Armored Cavalry assignments, where my branch insignia was crossed cavalry sabers.  After I branch-transferred to the Engineers, I changed my cav sabers to this castle.  But once you have been Cav, you’re always Cav,” he replied.

“Hey, Peggy, bring us another round of beers, would you, please?” he asked.  Miss Peggy was my bar manager, ever since she had opened the FARRP with Uncle Nick.

“Kenny, now I’m confused,” I responded.  “So can you just change around whenever you feel like it?”

“Kenny here is a ring-knocker,” interrupted Chief Warrant Officer Rod Jordan, who had been my Uncle Nick’s best friend.  “West Point grads get to do anything they want in the Army.”

“Oh, knock it off, Chief,” responded Tony, better known to the Army as Major Williams.  “You know that’s not true.  Besides, not every officer in the Army can be lucky enough to be a Texas Aggie, like me.  And since we’re on the subject, I’m a branch transfer myself, from Infantry to Intelligence.”

“Thank you, Peggy,” Kenny said, continuing to me: “Well, my request for branch transfer to the Corps of Engineers came through when I was still in Vietnam in 1971.  They wanted to send me to Germany to command an engineer company, but I protested that I needed to get branch training as an engineer first.  So they sent me to Fort Belvoir, Virginia, home of the Corps of Engineers, for the Engineer Officer Advanced Course.  The branch advanced course is a career requirement for all officers.  I wound up there in 1972 as a young captain in a class with mostly more experienced captains getting prepared supposedly to serve as engineer battalion staff officers.

“A huge portion of both my class and the one behind me were aviators who happened to be in the Corps of Engineers.  All through the Vietnam war, aviators in every branch were so critical to the war that they were centrally managed by Department of the Army.  Even though these guys were in Engineer branch, they had mostly spent multiple combat tours in Vietnam flying helicopters, and between tours they were working as instructor pilots training new aviators, or other critical aviation assignments.  Engineer branch had no control over their assignments, because they were required to focus on flying duty.

“When the war finally started winding down in 1971, the Army allowed control of the aviators to revert back to their branch.  These guys were all getting to be senior captains, so they were overdue for the advanced course, and made up the majority of our class.

“That’s when the first huge post-Vietnam reductions-in-force, or RIFs, began.  The Army gave each branch their quota of officers to declare excess and throw out of the service.  Engineer branch always considered all their aviators to be over-paid deadwood who had never done anything for the glory of the Corps of Engineers.

“So they knew just what to do.  They handed down RIF notices to almost all of the engineer aviators who were attending the advanced course, nearly wiping out my class and the one behind us.  When I began the advanced course, Engineer branch had 384 captain aviators on their rolls.  When the dust settled, there were only 77 left, and they were mostly the Regular Army officers that couldn’t be touched in that RIF.  Those RA aviators got wiped out in the next RIF the following year.”

“Engineer branch did the same thing to their Special Forces officers,” added Major Tony.  “In that RIF, we lost dozens of Green Beret engineers who had tons of years of service in Vietnam, many with combat valor awards and multiple Purple Hearts.  Most were good buddies of mine and didn’t deserve to be treated that way.  But the hyper-parochial Corps of Engineers figured if their officers hadn’t been running a rock-crushing detachment or commanding a dump-truck company, like engineers are supposed to do, their service was all bad time.”

“I had never realized how parochial the Corps of Engineers was,” Kenny continued, “until I became one.  They really don’t think of themselves as part of the Army – they even have their own distinctive uniform, with special engineer buttons.

So, in my class, besides me there was just one other branch transfer, a former artilleryman, getting remolded into an engineer like I was.  When I asked him how he happened to switch branches, he told me his story:

 

“He was in the right place at the right time a few occasions in Vietnam, and picked up some impressive awards and decorations, so at the end of his tour in 1969, his Artillery assignments officer offered him what was considered the most prestigious assignment in Field Artillery, in an Honest John battalion in Europe.  Honest John is a truck-mounted giant missile designed to carry tactical nuclear weapons.  For the assignment he had to get a super security clearance for nuclear weapons and go through special schooling for handling, securing and deploying nukes.  He said arriving in the unit was like joining some special exclusive fraternity, where everyone knew the secret handshake.

“All the Honest John firing batteries in Europe went through a rigorous year-long training regime, with continual inspections for nuclear weapons security, operation, assembly and arming, targeting, and procedures for every imaginable scenario.  It was a really high-pressure environment, where everything and everybody had to be absolutely perfect.  At the end of each annual training cycle, the most outstanding firing section of the most outstanding Honest John battery got the greatest honor available – the chance to fire the single live missile that was allocated for launch each year, obviously without a nuclear warhead.

“It was a gigantic big deal, with all the Honest John units from across Europe gathered to watch.  Every field artillery group commander throughout NATO was there, along with all the Army’s division commanding generals and the two Corps commanding generals and their staffs.  Dignitaries came from all over Europe and the Pentagon and joint staffs.  This was the high-prestige annual demonstration of how the US nuclear umbrella would defend Western Europe from overwhelming Soviet invasion.

“So, my buddy had been in his new battalion about six months when it came time for the great annual gathering at the special range for the Honest John demonstration.  Another unit, not his, had won the competition for the honor of firing that year’s missile.

“The Honest John missile is mounted on a firing rail angled over a giant truck called a transporter-launcher.  It is aimed simply by parking the truck facing the direction of the enemy target.  You don’t have to be extremely accurate when you are launching a tactical nuclear weapon, since presumably the invading enemy is so thick you can’t miss.

 

“So, the big moment finally arrived, and they had the suspenseful count-down:  THREE, TWO, ONE, LAUNCH!  With a giant whoosh the missile shot away from its launcher, climbing and heading downrange.  But as it flew away from the truck, two big objects went flipping away from the missile, tumbling back to earth.  They were two of the four tail fins of the rocket, which had not been correctly secured for launch.  Lacking half of its fin stabilization, the Honest John continued climbing but began to arc around, heading back toward the cantonment area behind the demonstration stands.  Finally, as it was passing overhead en route the family housing area, someone hit the self-destruct switch and blew the missile to smitherines.

“Needless to say, it was an enormous embarrassment to all concerned.  Everybody from the Secretary of Defense and the Supreme Commander of NATO on down vowed that would never happen again.  So, for the entire next year, every section of every Honest John battery in Europe drilled, and drilled some more, on securing the stabilization fins to the missile before launch.  That became the most important component of the training and inspections and evaluation for the whole year.  So finally the annual honor firing section was selected, and all the customary dignitaries gathered again for the famous Honest John demonstration firing.

“First, the firing officer made a big show of inspecting the fins, testing the torque on the attachment bolts.  Then the battery commander climbed up and gave his check, followed by the battalion operations officer, then the battalion commander, then the artillery group commander, and lastly the aide-de-camp of the Corps Commanding General.  Everyone gave their approval for the launch, so the countdown commenced:  … FIVE, FOUR, THREE, TWO, ONE, LAUNCH!

“With another gigantic WHOOSH, the missile ignited, building tons of thrust….

“In all the attention paid to attaching the stabilizing fins, they had forgotten to unbolt the missile from its launch rail.  As the thrust built, the missile lifted the entire truck transporter into the air, landing about thirty yards downrange.  It bounced back into the air again, then tumbled end over end twice and blew up with a giant explosion that scorched the faces of everyone in the viewing stands.

“My buddy said to himself, ‘They want to put thermonuclear warheads on this thing???’  The very next day he requested a branch transfer to the Corps of Engineers.”

IN MEMORY OF BILL AND TERRY AND EDDIE AND JERRY

 

 

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“SO, TONY, WERE YOU EVER SCARED FLYING IN VIETNAM?”

I was speaking to Major Tony Williams, who was sitting at the bar, sharing beer and war stories with a couple of his Army buddies.  They were regular customers here at Nick’s FARRP, a bar located in Fayetteville, NC, just outside Fort Bragg that I had recently inherited from my Uncle Nick.  My name is Gil Edwards, and I know nothing about the Army, which is why I keep asking these guys questions.

“No, shit, Sherlock,” Tony replied, “more times than I could count.  Anybody who says he wasn’t scared is either lying or was a REMF.”

“What is a REMF?” I asked.

“That, young civilian,” responded Captain Kenny Wayne, sitting beside him, “is an Army acronym for ‘Rear Area personnel,’ if you understand what I am saying.”  Kenny, I had learned, is an Airborne Ranger engineer officer.

“Oh,” I said, as it dawned on me what the ‘MF’ stood for.  “So, Tony, what scared you the most?  Was it enemy fire or getting shot down?”

“Not really,” he answered. “All the bad guys shooting at me were really bad shots.  I’d say probably running out of left pedal over a pinnacle was the scariest.”

“You’ll have to tell me what that means,” I said.

“Well,” he went on, “you know that a helicopter has a tail rotor.  Its job is to push sideways on the tail to keep the aircraft from spinning as the main rotor is pushing the air down to make lift.  The more load on the main rotor, the harder the tail rotor has to push.  You have foot pedals to control the tail rotor, so left pedal makes more push on the tail and right pedal makes less.  The tail boom works like a weathervane, so the more airspeed you have the easier it is to keep the tail straight.

“One day early in my flying tour, I was still a new guy flying co-pilot in the right seat of the Huey.  We were on a routine, single-ship resupply mission all day, what we called ‘ash and trash.’  We were carrying rations and water and ammo out to Korean company outposts on mountain pinnacles.  We called the Korean troops ROKs, for Republic of Korea.  It was pretty turbulent that day, and the Aircraft Commander was at the controls for this one approach.  The ROKs would pop a smoke grenade as we approached so we could see to land into the wind.

“So we were slowing out of translational lift, almost over the helipad where the ROKs were standing, waiting to get their supplies.  All of a sudden, the smoke shifted, as the wind came from behind and grabbed our tail boom.  The Aircraft Commander slammed the left pedal to its stop, trying to keep the bird straight, but we whipped around out of control.  To keep from crashing into the troops clustered under the bird, the AC pulled hard on the collective, trying to get more lift, but that just made us spin faster.  As he pulled and we spun, I saw the transmission torque meter surge through the redline limit of 50 lbs, up to 59 lbs overtorque, while the engine tachometer bled from 6600 rpm down to 5800 rpm, which is way too low to keep flying.

“We had spun clockwise 540, wildly out of control, when the bird plunged down over the side of the pinnacle.  As it accelerated falling, the tail boom caught enough airspeed to stabilize, and the rotor began to regain lift.  The AC regained control of the bird, then had me fly, because he was shaking too bad.  I took it back to a ROK battalion helipad, where we shut it down.

“Through one of our sister birds in the area, we relayed the radio message back to our unit that we had survived a severe overtorque and the bird was shut down, not safe to fly.  The company maintenance officer, a very senior captain on the major’s list, relayed back to us that he would bring his bird out and fly us back.  We were done for the day, and the shakes had begun to set in for all of us.

“When the maintenance bird arrived, the maintenance officer loaded us all on board, then put my AC and me at the controls to fly back to our airfield.  When I asked how he would recover the damaged helicopter, he said, ‘Just watch,’ and he cranked the sick bird and flew it back with us in formation, solo, for a hundred miles.  We were all afraid the damaged transmission would seize up at any time on him, but he wasn’t fazed a bit.  He said his job was flying birds that weren’t right.  I thought he wasn’t right.  Those maintenance officers were absolutely insane.”

Major Tony paused his story and held up his empty beer mug.  “Hey, Peggy, bring us another round, if you would, please.”  Miss Peggy was my bar manager, having been with my Uncle Nick since he opened the FARRP a few years ago.

Tony continued, “We called our maintenance test pilots AMOCs, for Aviation Maintenance Officer Course.  They didn’t normally fly on combat missions, but instead got their flight hours ‘test flying’ sick or unsafe helicopters to determine how to fix them.  Then they flew the repaired birds to see whether they were safe to turn back over to us combat pilots.

“Our company maintenance section was headed by that senior captain, with a junior captain and two or three warrant officers, all of whom were AMOC-rated as test pilots.  They supervised the work of the 25 or so enlisted specialists.  Those guys worked all day and most nights to keep our birds flying.

“One day a young AMOC warrant officer talked me into riding left seat as pilot-in-command with him in one of my sick Hueys on a ‘test flight.’  This Huey was having hydraulic problems, so the AMOC asked me to fly the bird for him, so he could perform some test procedures and take notes.  The crew chief, the enlisted man who ‘owned’ the bird, came too.  I took us up to 2000′ elevation and leveled it off.  The AMOC said he was beginning the test and turned off the hydraulic switch. This was a normal thing we did occasionally to train for losing all our hydraulics.

“The bird got that stiff shuddering feeling, but it was flying normal for hydraulics out.  The control stick which controls the tilt of the rotor disk is called the cyclic.  After about 30 seconds flying with hydraulics out, all of a sudden, my cyclic got a mind of its own and started driving back and left.  I was pushing so hard trying to get it back centered, I thought I was going to bend it.  But that servo had gone—“

“Woah, Tony.”  I interrupted.  “What does ‘sir voe’ mean?  It sounds like you are addressing someone special.”

“I forget, Gil, that you don’t know the lingo we speak here at the FARRP.  There are three hydraulic cylinders, called servos, that transfer the pilot’s controls to the rotor system.  It was one of these that had gone berserk and I couldn’t counter it.  In about a New York second the Huey chin bubble had gone straight up and rolled left, and I was staring at the horizon over my head through the ‘greenhouse’ roof bubble.  The crew chief, riding along in the left rear seat, later told me he was standing on the back wall staring straight down at the ground.  We all knew we were going to die.”

“Hate to interrupt,” said Kenny, “but you might explain to Gil what a New York second is.”

“Sure, that’s 0.37 sec, the time from when the light turns green till the guy behind you is honking his horn.  Anyhow, there we were, flipping inverted, when, cool as a cucumber, this crazy AMOC put down his clipboard and said, ‘I’ve got the controls.’  He took the cyclic in his right hand, and with his left he flipped the hydraulic switch back on.  Had I not let go of the cyclic when he took the controls, I would have still been pushing and we would have snapped around the other way.  Instead, he leveled us back out smoothly and said, ‘That’s what I thought would happen.  Let’s try it again.’

“The crew chief and I simultaneously screamed, ‘No damn way!!’  We declared that the test flight was over, and I flew the bird straight back to land at the maintenance pad.  The crazy AMOC said, ‘That’s ok — I think I know how to fix it now.’

“As I was shutting it down, the crew chief came up to my door and said, ‘Sir, I ain’t never NEVER flying with you again,’ and just walked off.  The AMOC said, ‘We should have this fixed by midnight, but I want to wait on the acceptance test flight until the morning.  Where can I find you?’

“I looked him straight in the eye and lied, ‘I’m scheduled for a combat assault in the morning – sorry.’

“He said, ‘You guys are crazy to go out there where people are shooting at you.  I would never have the balls to do that.’

“I told him, ‘Yeah, it’s a tough job, but you know …’ and headed straight for our officers’ club hootch.  There really was no combat assault the next day, but I made sure the Ops Officer had me flying ash and trash all day, just to be sure that AMOC couldn’t find me.

“Our assault helicopter company was located on the edge of the big Korean White Horse Division compound, so we had perimeter on two sides of our flight line.

Another time, that same crazy young AMOC was working on a different Huey that had an intermittent problem with the engine fuel control.  Shortly after sundown, he thought he had it fixed, so he took the bird out for an acceptance test flight, absolutely solo.  The tower had already shut down for the day, so no one knew he was out there except the Korean infantry troops on perimeter duty who saw it.

“He took off out over the perimeter wire, and was climbing out, too low and slow yet to really be safe.  We call that combination the deadman’s curve.  Suddenly, the fuel control malfunctioned, and his engine quit.  He autorotated the helicopter to a safe touchdown, just about a Claymore anti-personnel mine’s blast range outside the perimeter.

The damn fool climbed out of the bird, probably not even aware that he was in a minefield.  With a flashlight in his teeth, he fiddled with the fuel control on the engine, then climbed back in and restarted it.  He did his hover check, then began climbing out to turn crosswind leg to make a traffic pattern.  As he was turning from crosswind leg to downwind, it conked out again.  Another autorotation into the perimeter minefield, another restart, another takeoff.  He had three more engine failures before he finished his downwind leg, and a total of seven by the time he finally finished his traffic pattern and got back inside the perimeter.

“So as far as I know, he set the world record for the number of actual solo night autorotations into a minefield in a single traffic pattern.  We were sure impressed.  So impressed that absolutely NO ONE would ever fly with him again, except the other maintenance officers.

“And they were the ones who thought we were brave guys to go out in daylight with infantry aboard, and nothing more dangerous to face than some bad guys who were mostly lousy shots.”

“So, then,” I asked Tony, “what is the moral of your story?”

“Simple, Gil,” he responded.  “Aviation maintenance officers are ALL insane!”

IN MEMORY OF BILL AND TERRY AND EDDIE AND JERRY

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“SO, ROD, WHAT MAKES A HELICOPTER FLY, ANYWAY?”

I was talking with some regulars at the bar I had recently inherited from my late Uncle Nick.  It’s known locally as “the FAARP,” some sort of Army aviation term.  Just outside Fort Bragg, the FARRP is a hang-out for off-duty paratroopers and aviators, all Vietnam combat veterans who tell some crazy stories.  Since I know nothing about the Army, these guys must get tired of my questions.  Chief Warrant Officer Rod Jordan is an old-timer, a flight school classmate and for years a super buddy of my Uncle Nick, who has taken me under his wing since I arrived here in Fayetteville, NC.

“Well, New Guy, it’s really pretty simple,” Chief Rod replied to my question.  “You surely know that a helicopter has an engine, right?”

“Of course,” I said.  “I may not know much about the Army, but I’m not a total idiot.”

“Well,” he went on.  “Maybe you didn’t know that the engine has a very important purpose.  Its job is to make lots and lots of noise and vibration.  Because the earth doesn’t like noise or vibration at all.  So when the helicopter engine makes enough noise and vibration, the earth can’t stand it anymore, and it tells the helicopter to get away.  So the helicopter comes up and starts to fly.  And it keeps on flying as long as the engine makes enough noise and vibration.  But if the engine ever stops, the noise and vibration stop too.  So, the earth says, ‘OK, you can come back now.’  And down the helicopter comes.”

“Dang, Rod!” injected Major Tony Williams.  “Gil was asking a serious question, and you treat him like a child!”

“All right, hot dog.  You are such a smart ass, being a recent graduate of flight school and all.  You tell the lad what you know about it.”

“OK, I will.  Gil, the big rotor on top blows air down. That’s called rotor wash – the wind you feel when you are near a helicopter that is hovering.  The helicopter has a tail rotor, which pushes the tail sideways to keep the aircraft from spinning.  When a helicopter is hovering, it is really balanced on its rotor wash, which is extremely hard work for the aircraft.

“It actually takes more power for a helicopter to hover than it does to fly.  So, the normal way to take off is to lift up to a hover, which ensures you have enough power.  Then very gently you use the control stick to barely tilt the rotor disk forward, which makes the aircraft begin to drift forward, faster and faster.  As the bird gets ten or fifteen knots airspeed, the rotor disk begins to overrun its turbulent downwash and bite into undisturbed air.  When this happens, the effectiveness of the blades increases on the forward part of the rotor disk, so the disk tries to pitch up in front, tipping the bird back into its own turbulence.

“So as soon as you begin to feel the nose pitch up, you tip the rotor forward more, so the whole rotor disk slides completely into undisturbed air.  This is called translational lift.  At this point the helicopter begins to accelerate and climb out.  Usually the power setting for a hover is enough to enable you to climb at cruise speed.  Once you get to your intended altitude you can reduce power and maintain level cruising airspeed.”

“Wow,” I exclaimed.  “I always thought helicopters took off straight up.”

“Well, they can,” replied Chief Rod, “but it’s pretty dangerous.  It requires pulling in a lot more power, which increases the chances that your engine will quit.  And if that happens, having altitude but no airspeed means most likely you will break the bird when you crash.  And aviators always hate it when that happens.”

“Did you know that it’s possible for a helicopter to take off when there’s not enough power even to pick it up off the ground?” interrupted Major Tony.

“How could that even be possible?” I asked, very puzzled.

“In Vietnam, sometimes the Huey gunships were loaded so heavy with rockets, ammunition and fuel that they could not lift the skids off the ground.  So the technique known as a ‘Charlie-model takeoff’ was developed.  The crew chief and the door gunner would stand beside the loaded aircraft, plugged in to the intercom with long lines.  The pilot would pull in max power until the rotor RPM just began to bleed back, making the aircraft light on its skids.  Then he would ease the rotor disk forward, making the bird slide on its skids.  With the crew chief and door gunner running beside the helicopter, the aircraft would gradually accelerate into the wind.  When it reached translational lift, the helicopter would begin to pick itself up, but the pilot had to hold it just off the ground, staying in ground effect to gain enough airspeed to finally begin a slow climb out.  The crew chief and door gunner running beside the bird had to watch the toes of the skids carefully, because as soon as the skids tipped up they had to jump into the bird, or get left behind.

“If that happened, their intercom cords would unplug.  So, they had to call to the pilot immediately that they were on board, or else he had to abort the takeoff.  Kept those guys in pretty good shape.  It wasn’t a problem landing after the mission, because the birds were always lighter in fuel and ammo.”

“Well,” I concluded, “that makes sense, if you think about it, I guess.”

“But it’s even more complicated than that,” continued Tony.  “When you are flying forward, the rotor blade advancing on the right side of the aircraft has more relative airspeed than the retreating blade on the left.  The faster the helicopter flies, the greater the difference between the airspeed of the blade on the right and the left.  The amount of lift a wing has is related to its airspeed, so the faster you fly the stronger the lift on the right side gets and the weaker the lift on the left side.”

Captain Kenny Wayne broke in.  “Hey, maybe that explains why it’s so dangerous to parachute from the left door of a helicopter.  I’ve made a bunch of chopper blasts, but always from the right door.  Early on I watched a jumper ahead of me going out the left door of a Huey get caught in the turbulence, so his parachute static line got snarled in the skids of the helicopter.  He was hanging helpless, face down under the bird.

“Since it was impossible for anyone to climb outside and try to free him, they had to fly the helicopter back for landing at a high hover, while people on the ground got him untied.  If he had come loose from the skids while the descending helicopter was below 300 feet, there wouldn’t have been enough altitude for his parachute to open.  In that case, he would have splatted into a giant pizza on the drop zone.  So my personal rule is:  Never jump the left door.”

“Thank you very much for that extraordinarily superb insight, Kenny,” Tony resumed explaining.  “As I was saying, the helicopter would flip over if it didn’t reduce the right-side lift and increase the left-side lift.  The aircraft does that by flattening the pitch angle on the rotor blade advancing on the right side and increasing the pitch on the left side to keep the lift balanced.

“Just one problem though.  The blade on the left side already has less relative airspeed, and when you increase the pitch angle as the airspeed decreases, eventually you reach the point where the airflow across the top of the retreating blade breaks turbulent and you lose lift completely.  That’s called a stall.

“The faster an airplane flies, the better the lift from its wing.  But in a helicopter the faster you fly, the closer you get to ‘retreating blade stall,’ which means the rotor disk violently flips the bird left and back.  That indicates the moment before the simultaneous finale of the flight, the aircraft and all those misfortunate enough to be on board.  Bad news,” Tony concluded.

“Wow!” I exclaimed.  “Sounds like there are a lot of ways to die in a helicopter.”

“That’s not the end of it, young lad,” continued Chief Rod.  “When a helicopter flies slow enough, there is another hazard.  You can lose translational lift, which means the rotor, instead of finding undisturbed air for lift, can wind up in its own turbulence.  That’s called ‘settling with power.’  The sudden loss of lift is indicated by an instantaneous plunge.  If you have enough altitude you can get out of settling with power by nosing the bird forward to get the rotor back into undisturbed air.  But if it happens at low altitude, you will probably break the bird, and likely some of the people on board.  We always hate it when that happens.”

Tony interrupted Rod.  “In flight school they taught us a lot of simple rules which it really pays to remember.  For one, crashes normally only happen at or near the ground.  For another, it is always a good idea, before you take off, to have a plan for where you intend to land.”

“Gee,” I said.  “No wonder people are scared of flying in helicopters.  Too many ways to die.”

“Yeah,” Rod replied, “you could say that about a lot of things.  But helicopters are way safer than fixed wing planes, as far as I am concerned.  I’m a rated instructor in all of them, but airplanes scare the hell out of me.  Not enough moving parts for my taste.  Tony, what’s the very first rule they taught you in flight school?”

“That’s easy,” Tony replied.  “The engine is mandatory for takeoff, optional for landing.”

“What does that mean?” I asked, astonished.

“It means, my fine young friend,” replied Chief Rod, “that your engine can quit on you any time it feels like, and probably will chose to do so at the very worst moment possible.”

“Well, doesn’t that mean your helicopter will crash when it does?” I asked.

“Quite the contrary, lad,” replied Rod.  “The beauty of the helicopter is that, as long as the rotor is turning and you still have controls over it, you should be able to bring the bird down and walk away from it.  We call it autorotation.  You may be coming down pretty steeply, compared to the glide in an airplane, but you can still fly the bird.  If you have already selected a fairly clear and level spot to land in, there is enough energy in the momentum of the spinning rotor to cushion your touchdown to the point that you should be able to walk away.”

“But how can you find a clear and level spot after the engine quits?  What if there isn’t any close by?” I asked.

“Remember I told you the engine is guaranteed to quit on you?  You should never be surprised when it does, because you are always picking out safe landing areas all the time you are flying.  Tony, what always happens every time you fly with someone who is instructor-rated?”

“They’re going to chop the throttle on you, sending you into autorotation.  At least once, every flight, guaranteed.  After a while you learn to fly expecting the engine to quit at any time, so it’s never a surprise.  You get to where you can do an autorotation in your sleep.”

“Now, New Guy,” Chief Rod concluded.  “How did I originally answer your question about how a helicopter flies?”

“The engine makes noise and vibration that the earth hates.  So, when the engine quits, that’s what you meant.  Down it comes.  Actually, I guess, that seems like a pretty good explanation after all.”

IN MEMORY OF BILL AND TERRY AND EDDIE AND JERRY

The “Tales from Nick’s FARRP” series are a fictionalized version of real events and are dedicated to the memory of friends and classmates from the Class of 1969.

“They cashed in their horses for choppers and went tear-assin’

around the Nam looking for the shit.”

~ (Apocalypse Now)

                                                                                                                  

“What is that about, Rod?” I asked, pointing to the large sign hanging over the bar.

__|  IF YOU AIN’T CAV, YOU AIN’T — |

Chief Warrant Officer Rod Jordan, an Army helicopter pilot, had been my Uncle Nick’s best friend ever since they went through Army flight school back when I was little.  After several tours in Vietnam, Uncle Nick got cancer and was medically retired from the Army.  So he opened a bar called Nick’s FAARP in Fayetteville, NC, just outside Fort Bragg.  Last month Uncle Nick died, and, surprise, surprise, (to me anyway) he left me the FAARP.  It was just a couple of weeks ago that I arrived here, and I know nothing about the Army.  I would think all the Army guys here at the bar are getting tired of my questions by now.

“Well, New Guy,” Chief Rod replied, nodding at the sign I had asked about.  “There’s some things you should understand about the guys who come in here.”  (My name is Gil Edwards, but I had figured out by now that “New Guy” was his affectionate term for me.)  “There’s three kinds of troops that think they are God’s gift to the Army.

“First there are paratroopers. These guys believe that by virtue of their undeniable insanity of jumping, voluntarily and repeatedly, from an aircraft while in flight, they are elevated far above the pathetic remainder of humanity.  In fact, they derisively refer to non-airborne personnel as ‘legs,’ frequently preceded by a spitting gesture.”

“Airborne!!” exclaimed Captain Kenny Wayne, who was sitting beside Chief Rod.  When I looked puzzled, he explained, “That is the all-purpose exclamation paratroopers use for approval, agreement, enthusiasm, emphasis or just because they feel like it.  Airborne!!  Look at that,” he said, pointing to a small black embroidered patch on the chest of Rod’s uniform.

Looking closer, I saw a tiny parachute between curled wings.  “That is officially called a novice parachutist’s badge, better known as jump wings.  It takes five jumps in jump school to earn them.  Since Fort Bragg is the home of most of the Army’s airborne units in the world, a lot of the guys in this bar have jump wings, as you can see.  But look there,” he said, indicating the man on the other side of Chief Rod.  “Major Williams there wears senior jump wings.”

I saw that the man I knew as Major Tony had a star over his jump wings.  “That means that Tony has had the honor of serving on jump status for at least 24 months, has at least 30 jumps to his credit, and is a certified Jumpmaster.”

“What Kenny is leading up to,” interrupted Major Tony, “is that he wears the exalted Master Parachutist wings.  You see that his jump wings are topped by a star surrounded by a wreath.  That means Kenny has at least 36 months on jump status and 65 jumps, mostly night combat equipment jumps.  Our Kenny is what is known as a Master Blaster.”

“Getting back to my dissertation,” resumed Chief Rod, “the second category of guys who think they are God’s gift to the Army are aviators.  Despite the proven fact that a chimpanzee can be taught to fly an aircraft, every guy who has ever been entrusted with the operation of Army flying machines is absolutely convinced that he is among an extremely selective and sophisticated elite.  And during the Vietnam era the Army trained over 40,000 of them.

“Looking around this barroom, you see the guys in these green fuzzy uniforms like mine?” Chief Rod went on.  “These are flight suits made of nomex, a supposedly fire-resistant material, which serves as the distinct costume for people on flight status.  The aviator badge is those narrow wings that stick straight out.  Most of the Army’s aviators are warrant officers like me.  But here and there you find commissioned officers, like Major Williams there, who have managed to acquire the ‘additional skill’ of flying.”

Major Tony interrupted Chief Rod again.  “Warrant officers have a special term for us commissioned types who have aviator wings.  They call us ‘RLO’s.”

“What’s that mean?” I inquired, realizing I was asking that question a lot these days, trying to learn about all this Army stuff.

“RLO:  Real Live Officer,” Rod grinned as he jabbed Tony on the arm.

“Gil,” Tony added, “just like jump wings, there are levels of achievement for aviator wings.  You see my aviator wings are plain, because I only had one flying tour in Vietnam and barely got a thousand flight hours.  A star and wreath over the wings means a master aviator like Rod here has thousands of hours, usually multiple tours in combat.  How many flight hours do you have, Rod?”

“Barely six thousand, so far,” Rod replied. “Hey, Peggy, bring me another beer, would you?” he called.  Miss Peggy was my bar manager and guardian angel.  She had been with Uncle Nick ever since he opened the FAARP.

“So, how long have you been flying, Rod?” I asked.

“Well, your Uncle Nick and I, along with Peggy’s late husband Mike, all graduated flight school together back in 1962.  Guess I’m the only one left now.  Which brings me back to what I was telling you about the guys who think they are God’s gift to the Army.

“Since before the days of the Civil War, cavalry troopers have thought they are the finest beings to walk, or rather ride, on this earth.  Genghis Khan, Custer, J.E.B. Stuart and Patton are typical of cavalry troops, always flamboyantly dashing wherever they go.  The job of the cavalry has historically been reconnaissance, to be the Army’s eyes and ears, and to move quickly.  Cavalry means men who fight from their mounts.  Cavalrymen have always thought they are the swiftest, smartest, best-looking warriors in creation.

“Up until this century their mounts were always horses.  Sixty years ago they traded in their horses for tanks, and thirty years ago they converted to tracked reconnaissance vehicles.  Cavalry units have to be very mobile, but since they usually operate beyond conventional Army forces, they need to have their own firepower and the ability to mess up the bad guys.  So armored cav units, even at the platoon level, contain their scout elements, but also infantry, tanks and indirect fire support.  The Army calls that kind of integrated forces a ‘combined arms team.’  Usually combined arms teams are found at battalion or higher levels, commanded by colonels.  But in armored cav units, brand new lieutenant platoon leaders command them.

“Beginning in Vietnam, air cavalry units were born.  These guys have the same cav mission, but the mounts they fight from are helicopters.

An air cavalry unit, called a ‘troop,’ contains a platoon of helicopter scouts, but they also have their own section of helicopter gunships for fire support, plus their own helicopter-transported infantry platoon, called the ‘blues.’  But the mentality is still the same – all cav troopers look down their noses on everyone else in the Army.

“If that wasn’t enough, in 1964 the Army created an experimental ‘airmobile’ division, which meant some 15,000 infantry troops owned hundreds and hundreds of their own helicopters.  In 1965 the Army deployed this airmobile division to Vietnam, under the colors of the historic First Cavalry Division.  That meant that all nine of its infantry battalions were designated ‘cavalry’ units, plus its organic Air Cavalry squadron.  You see all these guys in here wearing big yellow patches with a horse head on their right shoulder?  That means those troops served in combat in Vietnam with the famous and prestigious First Cav.

Chief Rod paused.  “Now, Gil, exam time.  What did I just tell you?  What are the three kinds of troops I told you are insufferably arrogant?”

“Well,” I replied, realizing this was a check of how much attention I was paying.  “There are paratroopers, and aviators, and cav.  Right?”

Chief Rod nodded, and went on.  “Captain Kenny there is a Master Blaster.  Kenny, what are your cav credentials?”

Kenny Wayne nodded his head.  “I may be an engineer officer now, but before I branch-transferred I was an Armor officer.  I jumped with the world’s only Airborne Armored Cavalry Squadron, the 1^st of the 17^th Cav in the 82d Airborne Division here at Fort Bragg.  As a platoon leader I had my own scout section using jeeps mounted with machine guns, plus an infantry squad, also in gun jeeps, and an 81mm mortar section, plus Sheridan light tanks, all air-droppable. Over in Vietnam I served in E Troop of the 17^th Cav, in the 173d Airborne Brigade.  And after I branch-transferred to engineers I commanded combat engineers in the First Cavalry Division, as well.  So, yeah, I’m Cav.”

“Major Tony,” Chief Rod went on, addressing Tony Williams, “what are your Cav creds?”

“I was airborne as Special Forces my first tour in Vietnam,” Tony replied.  “After I came back, I went to Army flight school, and then flew for my second Vietnam combat tour in 7^th Squadron, 17^th Cavalry, a composite Air Cav unit.  Plus, on an exchange tour in the Mexican Army, I actually rode horse cavalry.  So I’m Cav, too.”

“Dang, Tony,” I interrupted.  “you’ll have to tell me about the Mexican Army some time.”

“Gil,” resumed Chief Rod.  “You asked me about that big sign over the bar?  It just about sums up the attitude of most everyone in here:  If you ain’t Cav, you ain’t shit!” He motioned with his head.  “So, Gil, look around this bar.  Every single person in here, except for you and Miss Peggy, is at least one of those three categories: airborne, aviator or cavalry.  The FAARP here is one of the few establishments in the world where most of the clientele are a combination of two of those, and quite a few, like Major Tony, me and your late uncle Nick, are all three.  So you probably should be wearing a flak vest when you are here.”

“Why on earth do you say that?  Is there some danger?” I asked in astonishment.

“Yeah, there really is,” replied Chief Rod.  “The egos in the FAARP here are so over-inflated that this whole place could explode at any minute.”

IN MEMORY OF BILL AND TERRY AND EDDIE AND JERRY