My first crash was just a little bitty one

My first daylight mission with the Slicks was flown with my classmate from Wolters and Rucker, Bill Reinhardt. Bill and I graduated from flight school on the same day but somehow his day to report in Vietnam was slightly behind mine. In any event, he'd been in the 11th Cav much longer than I had and was chosen to fly as Pilot in Command or Aircraft Commander.

Despite the fact that I had more flight time logged from the 199th where we flew almost every day, I was more than happy to fly as Bill's co pilot. I never figured out why the AC was seated on the left side of the helicopter with the copilot on the right because, in my opinion, the right side of the Huey cockpit had a much better sight picture of the instrument panel than the left. In any event, there we were, walking out to the revetment area where the Hueys were parked. It was one day that can only be described as hot as hell.

When we finished with our preflight of the Huey, we strapped on the bullet proof vests that we referred to as "chicken plates" and climbed into the cockpit, put on our helmets, buckled our 4 point harnesses and began the start up procedure to get the turbine up to operating speed. With everything in order to leave, Bill took control of the ship and began to ease it up to a hover.

Revetments weren't the best place in the world to be hovering. They didn't allow a lot of room for that because they were really designed to keep scrapnel from hitting the ship during mortar and rocket attacks and their walls were very close to the left and right side of the helicopters.

I remember watching the torque meter and feeling the Huey shutter a little bit. I immediately knew something was wrong. Bill got on the intercom and said the skids were stuck in the asphalt. It was common place for high temperatures to exist and as a result of that, find that the asphalt had become tacky to a point where you could even hear the difference in the sound of your walk when each step you took carried with it a squishing sound.

In any event, if you ever watched a Huey leave the ground and come to a 3 foot hover, you may have noticed that the typical manner in which they did that, was to have the ship lift the front part of the skids off first, rare back just a bit and then lift the back of the skids off and come straight up. Bill had the cyclic in the aft position and was applying enough rear cyclic to lift the front of the skids up, but the ship didn't want to let go of the asphalt. We appeared to be hopelessly stuck.

With more than a small amount of skill, he managed to get the front of the helicopter light on the skids but the rear portion of the skids simply dug in deeper. At that time he began applying left and right pedal inputs to the tail rotor hoping that we could get the left and right movements of the skids to wallow their way out of the muck. For the inexperienced, let me say that this takes a huge amount of pilot technique and Bill had it. It wouldn't have made an ounce of difference who was doing the flying on that day because "Stuck was stuck".

Bill eventually managed to get the front section of the skids completely under his control. As a result of that and the degree of "stickiness" that existed on the pad, we found that the left rear skid had dug further into the asphalt than the right rear. In any event, he managed to get the Huey's nose to come up a bit and continued to try and break the asphalt's hold on the rear skids. Eventually it worked.

Bill had quite correctly been using right pedal as left pedal turns required more torque because of the torque that was stored in the rotating rotors. You have to remember that the rotor diameter of the Huey was 48' in diameter and stored a boat load of energy.

The second we broke loose from the asphalt, with all the control inputs that existed at that moment, the tail boom of the Huey began to move swiftly toward the revetment wall on the left side of the ship. It was at that moment that we felt and heard the left horizontal stabilizer as it hit the revetment wall.

To make a long story short, we came within a hair of a situation that could have knocked the entire tail boom of the Huey which would have resulted in a catastrophic failure that would have totally destroyed the ship. Bill's lightning reaction put the Huey back in the middle of the revetment where he landed it and shut down.

We inspected the tail boom with a crew chief, deemed everything was okay and started all over again. We managed to get underway safely and return without incident. With all the action that took place during our attempts to get the Huey off the ground and the resulting crash into the revetment wall, I don't have any recollection of the mission other that that.

I often times wondered what my history in the 11th Cav would be if my first daylight mission began with a crash before we ever even left the revetment. In any event, let me say that Bill was a great Huey pilot and proved that over and over again especially when we began operations into Cambodia.

A hearty "well done" to my good friend, flight school buddy and fellow Huey pilot from the Slick Platoon, Bill Reinhardt.