I Was A Vietnam War Pilot

Remains of Vietnam-era pilot, plane’s observer to be buried in Arlington

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It was just too hard. Messinger recounted his days teaching the basics of hovering and flying a piston-engine helicopter at no-frills facilities called stagefields, spaced well away from the main heliports. Practice at the stagefields helped build the complex skills needed for landings and takeoffs. Instructors threw inflight emergencies at the students without mercy. Wolters trained pilots for all branches of the armed services and for allied countries, in particular the South Vietnamese army—a total of 41, in 17 years of operation.

At the peak of activity, just before U. There they learned instrument flight rules, tactics, formation flying, and how to operate the bigger, turbine-powered Huey. The entire process—from boot camp to Wolters through graduation from Rucker—took less than a year. In that time, a high school graduate was transformed into a UH-1 pilot, holding the rank of warrant officer.

A teenage enlistee at the recruitment center might have had visions of an exciting, all-expenses-paid helicopter career, but he may have missed the part about having to go through not just one but two spit-and-polish phases called boot camp. The second, at Wolters, was called preflight school, and for warrant officer candidates it lasted four miserable weeks, a purgatory ruled by a living terror known as the TAC Training, Advising, and Counseling officer, who specialized in finding all levels of imperfections, down to misalignment of socks in the drawer, uniforms in the closet, and notebooks on the desk.

An infraction by one WOC could bring down fire upon his entire preflight class. If the sink was too clean, they took it apart to find something wrong. They got us up at midnight and turned us into the hallway. But after four weeks it got easier. An aircraft commander in Vietnam—even if too young to vote—was going to hold life-and-death power over his copilot, crew, passengers, and many others within range, so he needed a cool and steady temperament.

Occasionally a senior pilot was injured, and brand-new copilots had to take command. And they could face such trials very soon after landing in Vietnam. Williams recalled that one of his classmates, having been called into action while on an orientation flight with a veteran aircraft commander just four days into his first tour in Vietnam, was killed in action.

Jim Martinson, another student, had been in-country just a month when he was shot down twice in one day. We were on the second lift, and every time a slick [on the first lift] would get on the radio you could hear the gunfire. There were gunships flying over the targets, [white phosphorous] smoke, and the enemy firing from the treelines.

Shot Down During Vietnam: A Fighter Pilot's Story

It was surreal, like: How did I end up in this movie? A few flight instructors carried the tradition of torment past the preflight barracks and into the air, screaming at their students and rapping them on the helmets with a stick. By comparison, commissioned officers who came to Wolters for identical flight training enjoyed the good life.

They avoided the first month of hell and received a stipend to live off-base, so they usually had enough cash for amenities and weekend misadventures. To stretch his salary he shared an apartment in Weatherford, a half-hour east, with other officers. They commuted in style. Whether a privileged officer or lowly WOC, all students faced the risk of failure. There were constant tests and emergency drills. The most hair-raising of the flight maneuvers required trainees to cope with complete engine failure: They had to take their hurtling, unpowered machines all the way to a screeching stop on the ground.

After the instructor pulled off the power and left the main rotor to windmill, students had only seconds to adjust the controls and find a safe landing spot—which could be out of sight behind them.

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This taught them to scan instruments constantly, and be aware of traffic, terrain, and wind direction at all times. Over his career of flying and instructing, Brown practiced the maneuver more than 80, times. Mistakes during autorotation practice at Wolters caused aircraft damage, injuries, and a handful of fatal crashes. If the students failed a key test along the way, they washed out of helicopter school.

During the peak enrollment years, and , about 15 percent failed to graduate from Wolters. While noncoms and officers could go back to work they had been doing, a newly arrived Warrant Officer Candidate who failed had no such fallback, and likely would end up slogging through rice paddies in Vietnam. Of all the Stateside tests to earn that ticket, the most critical and memorable was the solo flight and the check ride leading up to it.

Some students never developed the hand-eye coordination to keep the aggravating machines steady in a low hover, and so never got a chance to fly solo around the field three times and move on. The strict timetable at Wolters required students to qualify for soloing after 10 to 15 hours of dual instruction. Students who survived the solo saw immediate and happy changes. We will never forget John Stahl and all those who gave their all in the service of our United States of America. I went off to boot camp at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

There we went through the usual training except for sending the 6 of us to specialized training We would form a squad or flight and march to the theater to watch films to indoctrinate us to become pilots! They did not have to do that, as I really wanted to fly! After boot camp, flight school was a delight. We first learned the basics of flight in a little Hiller OHD. We learned to take off and land. Fly cross-country and learned how to navigate with landmarks, maps and weather.

Next we learned to fly on instruments in a Bell OHT. Suffered my first turbo failure and immediately turned around and landed to safety.

Basic training for a dangerous job.

Then on to the Huey My happiest days were flying the UH-1H Huey. We learned to carry heavy loads with a big tank full of water in the back.

List of Vietnam War flying aces

Sometimes the instructor would land and drain half of it out This is me in my Huey after preflight inspection and ready to crank up and take off for a day of fun in the sun! Who would have guessed? We wore Nomex Flight suits, two-piece not the one-piece zip up. We were very grateful cause we could leave our shirttails hang out of our trousers It was a little cooler!

Vietnamization

Who am I to complain! The guys we carried suffered 24 hours of danger in combat each day We only had a 20 second survival rate to worry about. Retrieved 15 December Lists of aviation accidents and incidents.

Italics indicates that the list is a category page. Accident analysis Air crash investigators Aviation archaeology Aviation safety.

List of aircraft losses of the Vietnam War - Wikipedia

Vietnam War timeline v t e. Retrieved 7 February Retrieved from " https: Webarchive template wayback links Use dmy dates from August All articles with dead external links Articles with dead external links from September Views Read Edit View history.

This page was last edited on 7 December , at By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Johnson Richard Nixon G. Ho Chi Minh General Secretary:

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