Read Online Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond by Robert F. Curtis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert F. Curtis
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world and take it high into the sky. You are young and strong and nothing can ever change that for you—Ever. You can fly.
6
LUCK AND SUPERSTITION
DA NANG, VIETNAM ■ JANUARY 1971
I have no idea if pilots are more or less superstitious than people in other professions. Some have their “lucky” objects, some must do an obsessive/compulsive certain thing every time before they fly, while still others show no superstition at all. During Vietnam, mine became “petting” my aircraft, a soft pat on its nose or a rub on the skin by the door, as I boarded. It was a promise to the machine that I would take care of it and in return it promised to bring me back. I don’t think I had or needed any superstitions until I flew with the oldest pilot I have known before or since, but I did afterwards on the grounds that if it worked that long for him, it would work for me.
S ometimes when flying missions in northern I Corps, we would see a single gray and black Huey, usually high above us and always alone. Sometimes it would be headed off toward the mountains that marked the border of Laos. Other times, we would see it sitting on the ground, just sitting by itself, in the middle of nowhere. Occasionally, we would see a man in a white short-sleeve shirt leaning against the side of the aircraft as it sat outside a small village. We always looked upon this as something of a wonder in our world of green uniforms and green helicopters above the green forest.
To those of us in the 101st Airborne, it always seemed an insane thing to do, to fly a gray and black helicopter without door guns by yourself and to wear a white shirt and tie, to put yourself outside the protective wall of the military and fly alone into unknown places. Of course, the Air America pilots that flew the gray and black Huey’s probably felt the same way about us, flying above the green for paltry military pay into hot landing zones and dusty mountaintops, day after day. And, of course before they were Air America pilots, they were us, learning their trade in the same helicopters we flew before leaving the green nomex for a shirt and tie.
Air America also flew many other types of aircraft, but we seldom saw them. Once, while waiting out some bad weather at the small, crumbling airstrip in the old imperial capitol, Hue City, I watched an Air America Helio Courier (a very short landing Swiss-built aircraft) drop from the clouds, roll to a stop in what seemed like its own length, off load a passenger, and after taking off in less than 100 feet, climb back into the sky in about two minutes flat. It disappeared into the clouds nearly as soon as it broke the ground. I had no idea how the pilot even found that airfield through the clouds, let alone land his fixed-wing in the same space a helicopter would have taken. Another time, it seemed I was flying through a cloud of what looked like snow, but then realized it was actually white paper, and looking up, I saw an old C-47 dropping Chu Hoi (“I surrender”) leaflets on the I Corps forest below us.
Strange aircraft, operating alone, were just part of the background of the war. All in all, Vietnam was a strange war—at least compared to what I had read about WWII—but a war that offered unusual opportunities to the participants. Opportunities like the two-week leave to anywhere in the world you wanted to take it, introduced in late 1970.
The two-week leave program was designed to keep morale up, always a good thing. Anyone could take two weeks of leave, right in the middle of the war and go anywhere they liked, albeit at your own expense, unlike Rest and Recuperation leave (R&R) when Uncle Sam pays for your flight. Patriotic airlines immediately introduced cheap fares from Vietnam back to the United States. Wishing for a nice break from the war, I immediately looked for the best deal and found it in a North West Orient ad.
For $350 all-in-all-done, I could fly commercial air from Da Nang, South Vietnam, to Nashville,
6
LUCK AND SUPERSTITION
DA NANG, VIETNAM ■ JANUARY 1971
I have no idea if pilots are more or less superstitious than people in other professions. Some have their “lucky” objects, some must do an obsessive/compulsive certain thing every time before they fly, while still others show no superstition at all. During Vietnam, mine became “petting” my aircraft, a soft pat on its nose or a rub on the skin by the door, as I boarded. It was a promise to the machine that I would take care of it and in return it promised to bring me back. I don’t think I had or needed any superstitions until I flew with the oldest pilot I have known before or since, but I did afterwards on the grounds that if it worked that long for him, it would work for me.
S ometimes when flying missions in northern I Corps, we would see a single gray and black Huey, usually high above us and always alone. Sometimes it would be headed off toward the mountains that marked the border of Laos. Other times, we would see it sitting on the ground, just sitting by itself, in the middle of nowhere. Occasionally, we would see a man in a white short-sleeve shirt leaning against the side of the aircraft as it sat outside a small village. We always looked upon this as something of a wonder in our world of green uniforms and green helicopters above the green forest.
To those of us in the 101st Airborne, it always seemed an insane thing to do, to fly a gray and black helicopter without door guns by yourself and to wear a white shirt and tie, to put yourself outside the protective wall of the military and fly alone into unknown places. Of course, the Air America pilots that flew the gray and black Huey’s probably felt the same way about us, flying above the green for paltry military pay into hot landing zones and dusty mountaintops, day after day. And, of course before they were Air America pilots, they were us, learning their trade in the same helicopters we flew before leaving the green nomex for a shirt and tie.
Air America also flew many other types of aircraft, but we seldom saw them. Once, while waiting out some bad weather at the small, crumbling airstrip in the old imperial capitol, Hue City, I watched an Air America Helio Courier (a very short landing Swiss-built aircraft) drop from the clouds, roll to a stop in what seemed like its own length, off load a passenger, and after taking off in less than 100 feet, climb back into the sky in about two minutes flat. It disappeared into the clouds nearly as soon as it broke the ground. I had no idea how the pilot even found that airfield through the clouds, let alone land his fixed-wing in the same space a helicopter would have taken. Another time, it seemed I was flying through a cloud of what looked like snow, but then realized it was actually white paper, and looking up, I saw an old C-47 dropping Chu Hoi (“I surrender”) leaflets on the I Corps forest below us.
Strange aircraft, operating alone, were just part of the background of the war. All in all, Vietnam was a strange war—at least compared to what I had read about WWII—but a war that offered unusual opportunities to the participants. Opportunities like the two-week leave to anywhere in the world you wanted to take it, introduced in late 1970.
The two-week leave program was designed to keep morale up, always a good thing. Anyone could take two weeks of leave, right in the middle of the war and go anywhere they liked, albeit at your own expense, unlike Rest and Recuperation leave (R&R) when Uncle Sam pays for your flight. Patriotic airlines immediately introduced cheap fares from Vietnam back to the United States. Wishing for a nice break from the war, I immediately looked for the best deal and found it in a North West Orient ad.
For $350 all-in-all-done, I could fly commercial air from Da Nang, South Vietnam, to Nashville,
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