Formation Flying - A New Skill

 

There was, of course, a learning curve to integration into the flight. While in flight school we had practiced formation flying, but it wasn’t something that was a major part of that training. Oddly, what we learned had little relevance to what we’d find in Vietnam given that the instructors were all pilots who had returned from Vietnam. You would think that you’d get the straight dope that way, but it didn’t work out. The reason, I think, was that the rules that governed formation flying in the United States were quite different than those we’d find in country.

After the orientation flights in country, in which we were shown the local area, taught the radio frequencies such as those for the evac hospitals and the tricks of moving around South Vietnam, we were assigned to fly the real missions. As Peter Pilots, meaning we were the FNGs, we were paired with Aircraft Commanders who were the most experienced. The gag here was that most of them had only been in country for seven or eight months. We’d often joke about “back in the old Hornets,” which might have been just a few weeks earlier… Everyone in the company had been there less than a year.

Formations were much tighter, designed, for the most part, to facilitate the picking up of soldiers in the field and to allow for the door guns to cover the most area. Most often the formation was called a staggered trail, meaning Lead was followed by the odd number chalks and to his right or left, was chalk two, followed by the even numbered aircraft so that there were two lines of helicopters.

Formation Flying over South Vietnam

The thing was, these sorts of tight formations set up other flight dynamics with which we FNGs were not familiar. Each aircraft had to be slightly higher than the one it followed, otherwise, you’d get caught in the rotor wash. To maintain your position, you had to keep adding power until it was maxed out. The only solution then, was to drop down, swing out, and then rejoin the flight. Once everyone was integrated into the flight properly, that just didn’t happen.

If the PZ (pick up zone) was hot, meaning, of course, there was enemy firing at the soldiers, we’d know that. If the LZ was hot, we might not know that until on final approach. There were rules of engagement to cover that. Mostly we went in with “normal rules,” which meant we could return fire for fire received. Many times, given various circumstances, we went in with “full suppression,” which meant the door guns would be firing and the gun ships would by firing. “Negative suppression” meant we didn’t return fire unless a specific target could be seen.

We might run a dozen or more combat assaults in a day, shifting the soldier from one location to another, flying in supplies and reinforcements, moving in a blocking force, or heading out to support another mission. As the day wound down, we would often recover the soldiers that we’d put into the field in the morning.

On one occasion, one of the soldiers climbing into the helicopter was a washout from flight school. He recognized me and shouted, over the sound of the turbine engine and the popping of the rotor blades, “What are you doing here?”

I shouted back, “Get out of my aircraft.”

Of course, I didn’t mean it. I was just glad that I was flying over Vietnam rather than walking through it as he was. It was the value of getting through flight school.