Читать книгу Flying Through Life - robert Psy.D. firth - Страница 8

Vietnam, My first war

“No, son - you're not up there alone - not with all the things you come through. You have the greatest co-pilot in the world even if there is just room for one in that fighter ship - no, you're not alone”.

- Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr., USAAF, 'God Is My Copilot,' 1943

What choice did I have- fly for Air America or get my ass shot off in a plastic boat? I was elated, out of the freezer for warmer climes and no military crap to deal with. I never liked the military and wasn’t much for taking orders except for my own. So, this civilian deal was great. In fact, when I was interviewed and tested to become a NROTC recruit, the Officer, a Marine Colonel named Gentleman, told me that it was too bad I wasn’t a Jap. “Yes sir, and why is that sir? “Because young, man, the Jap navy had the perfect place for you.” “Sir,” I said? “Well son, according to your personality evaluations and test scores you would be the perfect candidate for a one man submarine.” That was that, I guess he found out that I didn’t play well with others. He was right.

After the phone conversation with the guys in Washington, the very next day I flew to DC, meeting with a Guy named Barbie and his boss, H. H. Dawson. Dawson, a four pack a day man, had a voice like a mechanical grating machine. Years Later, he died from throat cancer. The Feds don’t mess around. Three days later I was in Taiwan for a six week school followed by Bangkok for another school followed by a training program in Jungle survival and other esoteric things… like the big black pill we found in our survival vests. The instructor said that we shouldn’t mistake this for a gum ball… he had only one hand and had crash landed in some God forsaken place and survived for weeks on monkey tails and such.. We listened to him, I can tell you.

After all this ground school, we moved into the flight training. The first plane that I flew for Air America was the Pilatus Porter. The Porter was a “one trick aircraft.” It could take off and land in an amazingly short distance. I did everything I could to stay away from it. The Porter has only a single engine. So, what’s wrong with that, you might ask? Well, for one thing, it’s built by the French and for another, the yella-fellas on the ground in black PJ’s weren’t very nice. In fact, they were down right hostile .One of our planes had been shot down shortly before I got there, the crew was skinned alive, gasoline was poured on their raw bodies and they were tied across the hot aluminum wing and left to die a really painful death. No one talked about this but we all knew about it.

The Porter, with its highly unreliable Turbomeca French engine, was to be avoided at all costs. I however, as fate would have it, was not lucky enough to stay away from this tremendously ugly aircraft and found myself in ground school in Bangkok and soon thereafter, in flight training.

The days in Taiwan were fun and have remained pleasantly in my memory. In Taipei, we had uniforms made by a local Taylor, Peter Woo, whose shop was across from the President Hotel where we stayed for several weeks. One of the guys, L.J. Broussard, a Cagin from Louisiana said to the tailor “Missa Woo, ah really lik China- cuz all you guys a’ smaller than ah am.” While telling Mr. Woo this, he was laughing and poking his middle finger while holding a big cigar, into Mr. Woo’s skinny chest to emphasize the point. “Woo, listin, ah wants red silk liners understand, an ah’ pay more now you heah- heah’s an extra fifty bucks now do it all nice now, heah? “ - all the while with more finger poking. The little Tailor most certainly did “Heah” but obviously didn’t like this brash American and didn’t deliver the Cajun’s uniforms until we were on the bus heading to the airport.

When we got to the hotel in Bangkok, LJ ran upstairs, saying- “Robbit, pleas jus bring up m’bags- ah gotta try on m’uniforms, heah?” Sure, I said and gathered our luggage while the Cajun ran up the stairs holding the box with his uniforms. When I go to the top of the stairs I could hear this screaming coming from the open door down the hall. “Gawddam, Gawdamm that damm Chinaman, Gawdammit.” there was this bizarre shadow dancing on the opposite wall from the open door- a kind of flashing that was somewhat in tempo with the “hellayshus” cursing and bellowing emanating from the room.

When the bellman and I reached the door we saw LJ surrounded with pieces of torn open cardboard boxes and wrapping paper, shirts and pants were laying all over the floor. He had one leg in a pair of grey uniform pants and one arm in a matching shirt and was dancing on one leg in a circle trying to put his other arm and leg in. He was shouting and spitting mad with a red face mouthing an unending stream of vile curses in horrible French and mumbling something about “the dirty SOB Chinaman sewed my GD shirts sleeves and pants shut.”

This was Woo’s revenge- every pair or pants, all the shirts and coats were sewn shut- even the pockets were stitched closed. They did however have lovely red silk linings. I did my best not to laugh- but I had to drop the bags and get downstairs to do it.

We were in Bangkok for about four weeks. We memorized every system on the Porter, PT6A and Twin beach, C-45, as we would be assigned to one of them when we got to Saigon.

My flight instructor was Jake Werrel, an ex–marine carrier pilot. Jake was a true character, he wore a red bandana, mirrored sun-glasses and seemed totally fearless. The very first flight he picked a spot on the south side of the river about 20 clicks west of Cantho and said, “OK, see that?” “See what?” I said, seeing nothing but a river and the shore, covered with miles of yellow five foot tall river reeds. “That’s where we’re landing” Jake said. We were down to four hundred feet and I couldn’t see anything that even remotely resembled an airport. (Photo Platus Porter, 2,400 lbs EW, 4,800 lbs MGTOW with a 550 hp engine)

We were about twenty feet’ over the river descending into the river bank when Jake put the 550 HP turboprop into full reverse and begin puling the long porter nose through the horizon to about twenty degrees nose up. We were rapidly settling into the reeds as the lift was sucked from the wing by the massive application of full reverse power. Jake had the stick pulled full aft with his toes pressing the brakes when we hit the bank with a five hundred foot a minute rate of descent. I was scared shitless. The aircraft, blowing dust and reeds everywhere, rolled about two hundred feet into the reeds before stopping. We were alive.

Jake taxied forward a few hundred feet, turned the beast around facing the river and applied full Take off power. We accelerated back down the path of flattened reeds, reaching about forty five knots and bumped into the air just over the river. The tires didn’t touch the water, but it was close. Jake was laughing and said, “OK, now that’s how you do it.”

I flew the Porter around with Jake and other instructors for a couple of weeks before they turned me loose. The porter was a one trick aircraft; it took off and landed short. Real short, a STOL aircraft, “Short Take Off and Landing.

So, how do you fly a single engine aircraft all over Vietnam where the bad guys might skin you alive if they got their hands on you? The Turbomecca engine was not the most dependable power plant. It had a couple of internal design flaws that made it even more questionable. The first six months it was just luck that I survived- I made every mistake in the book. The first thing I learned was that in a single engine aircraft the most important lesson to remember is that there is no substitute for altitude- the higher you are, the further you can glide And the longer you live when the engine quits.

The Turbomecca engine does quit -mine quit twice. One failure was caused by a ruptured seal causing all the engine oil to blow out in about ten seconds. The oil pressure went to zero, temps climbed and the windshield was covered with oil. I had visibility out the sides but very limited forward. I was climbing through eight thousand feet when the seal let loose- I had the engine secured and the prop feathered in seconds. Interestingly, the prop did feather……

The Porter was silent, only the sounds of the slipstream as we settled toward the ground at something like three hundred feet per minute. I headed toward some cumulous clouds hoping to generate lift and remain airborne (and alive) a little longer. I called the company frequency for help- a very calm (too calm) Chinese voice from our communications center in Saigon, said, “Captain Flurth, pleas you stop saying help and say where you are.”

Because I spent so much time climbing I was close enough to my departure airport that I actually was able to fly a few patterns before landing. I was losing about 1000’ each time around so, when it looked right, I extended the flaps and dead-sticked it into the field, rolling off in the yellow gravel parking area. There were two passengers in the back who hadn’t said a word the whole time- I had forgotten all about them.

By the final circuit I had overhead a few fast movers (jet fighters,) two helicopter gun ships and a company Helio courier. The Helio landed behind me, I jumped in and we headed back to Saigon with the two passengers.

Later that day, a company chopper trying to sling my Porter under a helicopter back to the maintenance base dropped it from two thousand feet and it wound up a ball of smashed aluminum. Scratch that one you think? But, no, the company sent the data plate to Taiwan where an exact copy of the aircraft was fabricated. This, of course, enraged Pilatus, the manufacturer, who tried suing and all manner of expressing displeasure at this blatant disregard of their patent rights.

Before the company turned us loose we had to go through E&E (escape and evasion) training and firearms familiarity. We flew in a transport to Vung Tao where an army sergeant took us out to a firing range and let us blast off several thousand rounds with everything from .45 automatics to the Swedish K, the marvelous, fully automatic .9 MM sub machine gun designed by Karl Gustoff. This amazing but heavy, weapon could fire all thirty rounds through a two inch bulls eye without jumping around like the Thompson or the cheaply made .45 Cal grease gun. We had studied E&E (escape and evasion) in our initial training in Bangkok with an instructor who had lost one hand after crashing in the jungle and then spending days leading his passengers to safety. We listened very carefully and, except for the part about eating rotten deer eyes, carefully digested all his words. He showed us this large black pill that was in our survival vests –saying, “I guess you all know what this is?” We did, and we all tossed them down the toilet – that kind of thing just wasn’t American. (Photo The 9mm Swedish K)

One of his lessons was about trying to blend into the local population which was the obvious secret of the Viet Cong. Of course, this didn’t work well for us- we were all a hundred pounds heaver and a foot taller than the average Dink.

When we were given an opportunity to see if we could hide from Army trackers for practice, Immediately, I understood that the Viet Cong idea of hiding among the local locals was a great concept. All my pals went tearing ass out into local swamp to hide while I ran around them far to the east and spent two lovely days “hiding out” in the Aussie BOQ, swilling Fosters, laying on the beach and chowing down at their mess. All I had to learn was how to say was “G’day mate, how’s the warts on y’r bum?”

At the appointed hour, I wandered up to the rest of them, dry, tan, well- fed and wearing an Australian army Tee-shirt a boonie hat and sunglasses. My pals were mosquito bitten, dirty and hungry. All had been caught and spent a day being screamed at while tied up undergoing fake interrogation.

The trainers were pissed at me as were the flea bitten pilots. ‘OK, WHERE YOU HAVE BEEN!” screamed the chief trainer. “Escaping and evading, sir” I said. “just what you told us to do. I was blending in with the locals and learning to say “good on yr, mate, have another Fosters.”

Well, they really couldn’t argue too much. After all, I had evaded capture and was the only one who had- so, I won. We all had a good laugh but, the lesson was clear- no single pilot running through the jungle had much of a chance of escaping capture.

The one thing I did learn was to stop carrying the heavy ordinance and pack more vitamins, food and water in my vest. I got rid of the hand grenades, the machine gun and the heavy .45. I picked up a Randall M-14 knife (right) and a Colt .22, (left) a pair of light weight canvass boots, mosquito repellant, waterproof compass and had my maps covered in plastic. I started running and built my endurance up so that I could cover a lot of miles without stopping. The only hope was to get as far away from a downed aircraft as fast as possible.

I learned not to ever shoot at the bad guys. If you hit or kill one of their buddies, they will surely kill you when they catch you. Once you get away from the plane, don’t stop, split up and run, don’t try to hide close to the aircraft, run as far and as fast as you can. The biggest mistake people make is trying to hide- With fifty guys chasing your fat white ass you can’t hide- they will find you. These guys live in the jungle, they are in terrific shape and likely a lot younger than the average company pilot.

I knew where every Special Forces base in the entire rotten, snake infested, miserable country was. I knew the locations of every friendly town, hamlet, ville and of course, all the two hundred plus airports. We all knew all this and we all understood that if, or when, we went down, we could expect nothing good if we were caught. This was the principal reason that I tried very hard to get out of the Porter and intro something with two engines.

Unlike the guys who flew up north where the flying exploding telephone poles and AA stuff was everywhere, there wasn’t any of that down south. The very worst worry was having the bloody engine quit and only having one. My second engine failure in the Porter happened six or so months after the first one. This time, the engine just suddenly quit cold- immediately- like switching off a light bulb.

I was over the Delta, maybe fifteen minutes north of V-17, Cantho, alone and still climbing up to my usual twelve thousand feet. It was cooler there and about as high as I could fly without oxygen. Of course, with passengers, I had to watch their lips, when they marched the color of the sky and there was a lot of wheezing- I had to level off- kind of like a cyanotic altimeter.

Anyway, it just quit cold, the prop feathered but this time, I knew I was in trouble- there were no airports within range. I called the company- again they said to stop screaming and tell them where I was. I headed back to the south and saw what looked to be a road that might work. I had a couple of helicopters near by who had heard my “may day” calls and there were some armed Army choppers on the way. The road I thought I had seen from more than two miles up turned out to be the flat top of a wide rice dyke. It may have been ten to fifteen wide and plenty long for the Porter even without reverse power.

I got it down OK and immediately four or five little guys in black PJ’s came up from the fields to say “hi.” They were working in the patty and weren’t toting AK’s, so I felt a little better. There was a gunship flying around and one of my company choppers was landing. I remember giving the coffee kit to the Vietnamese and whatever else they wanted out of the plane. I jumped on the chopper and flew back to Saigon. Later that day the local VC torched the plane and the company office poggies tried to blame me for not staying with the machine- idiots!

It turned out that the beastly French engine had a fuel control pump that had a drive shaft keyed to the engine accessory case such that if the pump sensed any resistance the drive shaft was designed to shear, thus hopefully saving the gear case or the fuel control unit (FCU) but, of course, causing the engine to immediately quit! This “safety feature” in a single engine aircraft was something of a problem, the engine survives but the plane crashes- go figure!

I remember one flight heading back to Saigon during the summer monsoons. I was at two thousand feet descending into heavy rains, trying to stay visual and not doing too well. The Porter was into some very rough air with absolutely no visibility and pounding rain. Suddenly, the pitot system failed and all the vacuum instruments went haywire. I was flying on needle and ball only. Somehow, we remained upright and busted out the north side of the storm. I never forgot that flight and learned that I could rely on myself to remain calm and do the right thing under pressure. Once back on the ground, I was not so sanguine, that’s for sure…….

I didn’t know it then but my career was already changing. The stunt I had pulled during the escape and evasion training did not go un-noticed by my employers. The training personnel had to write evaluations and mine certainly stood out from the rest.

I was assigned to embassy flights more or less exclusively and met some interesting guys who, it turned out later, were top CIA spooks and who were interested in me for future work. More about this later, for now, I had survived and was pressuring the head shed to get me into something with two engines. They must felt sorry for me, After all, at twenty six, I was their youngest Captain. They assigned me to the C-45 program, the venerable twin beach. I had completed the ground school already in Bangkok, so a quick review and off I went for a few days of flight training and a check ride.

Changing aircraft with Air America wasn’t like the Mel Gibson movie. It took about thirty to sixty days to get checked out in a new piece of equipment and then you were assigned the lowest paying flights until you had some seniority to bid better ones. Luckily, I stayed on the embassy ops, so I was still flying eighty to a hundred hours a month. I didn’t see it then but clearly, someone was pulling strings for me and it had to be the “customer.”

One memorable flight, and one I will never ever forget, was flying the scheduled embassy courier trip from Saigon to Tay Ningh then Phan Thiet on the coast. I looked down to my right from my usual twelve thousand feet and noticed the remarkable artillery barrage exploding in the green jungle canopy. I remember thinking how many cannons it must have taken to do that, when, I saw to my left, another perfect explosion pattern parallel to the first one. In a split second, it dawned on me- Holly shit! I was flying right in the middle of a B-52 carpet bombing run!

There were five hundred pound eight foot bombs falling from the clouds, being dropped from thirty thousand feet over my head. I was suddenly cold and sweating at the same time- How frightened can you be- I was waiting for one to hit the overhead – it wouldn’t even slow up or go off- just cut us in half and we would fall two miles in pieces.

My single passenger, the Embassy Courier, had also figured out the problem, Three Fingered Louie, so called because he had lost two fingers on his right hand, reached into the leather briefcase and pulled out a bottle of JACK – it took him both hands to get the bottle to his mouth! (Photo Beech C-45)

I understood that somehow we were flying right between the bombers, a turn to the north or south would put us through the falling rows of hell we were unleashing on heads of the poor monkeys and elephants.

In moments it was over and the B-52’s, flying at five hundred mph, were far ahead of us. Louie, let out a very shaky long breath and put his bottle back into the courier pouch. This wasn’t supposed to happen. We were briefed every day on the locations of the artillery and bombing ops. Somehow, they messed up and it was close, as close as it can be!

The C-45, on the ground can be a squirrelly beast, very temperamental and needs a strong minded pilot. You have to make the aircraft do what you want and not what it wants. It will test you every time you give it the chance. Once in the air, the Beech is a true thoroughbred with not a single bad characteristic. She is remarkably stable and will trim up so well you can fly her with your fingers.

Of course, the way we flew them was a little different from what Olive Beach’s genius husband had in mind when he designed it. We flew them into very short PSP (pegged steel plank) greasy and wet bumpy hastily constructed strips. You had to hang them on the props with full flaps and gear and plant them on the first 10’, getting the tail on the ground hard with the stick pulled as far back as you can, steering with brakes, sliding and skidding to a nasty, semi-controlled stop before rolling off into the trees, hills or whatever.

We carried freight of all kinds and all kinds of passengers. Many Vietnamese rode Air America and we never knew who they were- friend or foe. The story was that in the daylight they were all friendly rice pickers but at night, they picked up AK’s and ran all over shooting up round eyes. The village chiefs were supposed to only place friendly types on our flights but, who knows. If you tell a guy that you will chop him up if he doesn’t give you a travel pass- what are you going to do?