From the Hornets to the Crusaders

My plan here had been to tell the tale in a chronological order from my arrival in Vietnam to my departure (DEROS). I have violated that rule on a couple of occasions because, well, I could. For the most part I will continue along that road, but sometimes will either jump forward or fall backward to cover an interesting tale.

It was in March that the command staff, meaning the company commanders and the battalion commander realized that there was a problem looming on the horizon. The Crusaders, that is, the 187^th Assault Helicopter Company, would see many of its senior pilots, meaning the aircraft commanders, rotating home in a short time. To avoid that, some of the pilots were moved around. I was one of those.

I was told that I would be moving up to the Crusaders from the Hornets and by moving up, I mean going from a point about thirty miles from Saigon to Tay Ninh, which was closer to Cambodia and a little farther north.

I arrived there without much in the way of fan fair. I had packed my duffle bag, stuffed some other, person items in a satchel, climbed into the back of a Huey, and was flown to Tay Ninh. I really don’t remember much about that but I must have reported to the company commander and was assigned to the first platoon.

The Crusader's Officers Club. Notice the sign on the right that suggests that if you

wear your hat in the club, you must buy the bar a round of drinks. I point this out because 

it is a rule that is routinely ignored on those TV shows that feature an officer's club. 

Because I was now a new guy, not in Vietnam, just to the unit, I was again a Peter Pilot, meaning that I wasn’t an aircraft commander. I flew with the first platoon’s ACs on a number of occasions and again, don’t remember much about that. One of the ACs was a heavy smoker and had a habit of engaging the forced trim on the cyclic. That meant that if you let go of it, for whatever reason, it would return to the position that put the aircraft in a climbing right turn. The theory, I think, was that if the pilot who had actual control of the aircraft was suddenly incapable of flying it, the helicopter would not quickly spin out of control, but would enter a shallow climb, giving the surviving pilot a chance to grab the controls.

It also meant that you had to fight the cyclic the whole time because it wanted to enter that climbing turn. Rather than slight pressure to move the cyclic, it required a little more effort. I thought of it as annoying. It made the task more difficult and I know of no case in which using the forced trim in that fashion saved anything. I did find a way to defeat it so that flying wasn’t as strenuous as it had been.

The first platoon had a scheduling board and the platoon leader would put up the aircraft assignments for the next day on that board including which AC and pilot in which aircraft. One day, after about a week or so, I checked the board and didn’t see my name in the pilot slot. I thought I had the next day off and as I turned, I though that I did see my name. I looked back and found that I was assigned as the AC of Spare Two.

Each day two “spare” aircraft were assigned. Spare One, would be pre-flighted and ready to go if needed. If the flight was staging somewhere away from Tay Ninh and there was an airfield or location closer to the area of the day’s operations, Spare One, would locate there. If not needed, when the flight was released, Spare One returned to Tay Ninh if it had flown anywhere else.

Spare Two was the aircraft that would replace Spare One, if Spare One was called up to take a slot in the flight. In other words, it was fairly unlikely that Spare Two would be flying and all you had to do was remain in the company area, sleeping, reading, playing cards or whatever in case you had to replace Spare One. It wasn’t much of an assignment, but then I was now the AC of Spare Two for the next day.

There had been no announcement that I was now an AC. No one said a word to me about it. No ceremony, such as we had had at the Hornets when I was made an AC there. Just my name on the scheduling board in the left-hand slot for the AC rather than the right-hand slot for the pilot.

Of course, the next day, my name moved up and I was assigned to one of the chalk positions in the flight.  I don’t remember where it was because, I don’t remember if we had the lead or trail part of the flight, and I don’t remember if I was assigned an aircraft in the middle of those positions.

I do remember that I was assigned an aircraft, and if it was available, then that was the aircraft I would fly. If it wasn’t, then I would fly another, such as the one that I blew up on a land mine. And I had a crew, or rather, there was a crew chief and door gunner assigned to my aircraft as well. We all flew together most of the time.

For a little bit of foreshadowing, which we’ll get to later, their plan to prevent a number of the ACs leaving the company about the same didn’t work out.

  

Aircraft Commander

 

I don’t know if it was a unit policy or a local regulation, but a pilot was required to have 300 hundred hours of flight time in country before he could be considered for aircraft commander. That meant a pilot would have over 500 hours of total time when the flight school hours were considered.

At midday we had been released into the company area to stand by on the aircraft. We were told to head to the mess hall for lunch, but to return to the aircraft when we were finished eating. I walked to the helicopter and the aircraft commander, one of the senior pilots in the company which meant he’d been there for six or seven months, told me to grab my helmet and move to the left seat.

I will note here, and again I don’t know how wide spread it was or if it was something unique to our battalion, but the aircraft commander typically flew the left seat, though the helicopter was set up for the AC to be in the right seat. This was the opposite of the way airplanes were arranged. The AC took the left seat because the view from the left side was better than that on the right.

I wasn’t sure what was going on, but did as I was told. The AC, and I don’t remember who it was, told me to climb into the cockpit. He took the right seat and began to explain that the situation in the left seat was slightly different than what I was used to.

Notice the white cord around
my neck? This holds the SOI.
It became a status symbol for
some because the ACs were
the ones who normally wore
them.

In flight school, we switched seats depending on the training and who was with us, so I had experience flying in the left seat. But that was flight school and I had already learned that some of the truths we learned in flight school were not truths in country. This puzzled me because all the instructors were combat veterans who had recently returned from their tours in Vietnam.

As we sat there, he quizzed me on the various frequencies for the evac hospitals, for artillery clearances, where the hospitals were, and all sorts of things that I’d picked up flying around Vietnam for the last couple of months. He told me where we’d need to go for certain wounds, depending are where we happened to be. And then we went through some of the emergency procedures.

When we took off, I was the one who had to take care of everything. He just sat there, watching everything I did. Periodically, he would reach up and pull a circuit breaker that would cause an instrument to fail. He was making sure that I kept an eye on the instruments. Once I saw him reach up to do it and said, “Push in the circuit breaker.”

It was different sitting in the left seat. In flight school, our introduction to formation flying had been quite a bit looser than it was in country. Now the formations were tighter so that we would have better suppressive fire from the door guns. But the angles I had learned to watch for were different and it took a while to get used to that. It was almost as if I had just arrived in country and was learning formation flying all over again.

The learning curve was gentler and I picked it up quickly. I held our place in the formation, though I was a little bit farther back than I would have been in the right seat. The AC just sat there, watching everything, making a comment or two, or asking a question but mostly just along for the ride.

This went on for several days, until I had flown with each of the ACs at least once. They were all evaluating my abilities so they could determine if I was ready to be an aircraft commander. I figured they discussed it at the AC’s meetings that were held now and then.

Finally, I was told that I was ready for my AC check ride. First, in a single ship, we flew around the local area. I was responsible for all the radio calls… to Hornet Operations to let them know we were taking off, to the tower for clearance and to Cu Chi Arty to be sure we were clear of the gun target lines. We were making the round robin flight that required us to visit several outlying bases in what was known as Combat Support.

Along the way, the AC chopped the throttle to simulate an engine failure. I entered autorotation and said that if the engine failure was real that I would be making a mayday call, giving my location. As I flared out for touch down, he rolled the throttle back on was we ended that exercise at a hover. I began a climb, back to 1500 feet which was out of effective small arms range.

All that was only part one of the check ride. The next day was part two, which was in the flight. Same deal, the AC just watching everything but saying very little about how I was doing. Looking back on it, I know that had I screwed anything up, he would have taken control and let me know what I had done wrong.

When the flight was released for the day, the AC didn’t say much. Just told me to fill out the book and take the SOI (signal operation instruction which held the codes and frequencies for everything, which made it a classified document and required it by turned into operations at the end of the day) back to operations.

I didn’t ask how I’d done because, at the moment, even if I had failed, I wouldn’t know it. The chance was still alive that I had passed.

In the officer’s club, someone asked how I had done. I said that I hadn’t asked, and he couldn’t believe it. He didn’t subscribe to my philosophy. Of course, the determination hadn’t been made yet because the ACs had to get together to decide my fate.

I learned the answer after dinner that night, at the briefing in the club. The company commander said (more or less), “Randle has to buy the bar.”

For an instant I didn’t know what he meant, but then it became clear. I had been elevated to aircraft commander and because of that, I owed everyone a drink. One of the other ACs whispered to me, “Just give the bartender twenty bucks and let it go at that.”

As I did that, I realized something else. Suddenly, there was no one else to blame if there was a mistake in the aircraft. I was now the senior officer on board, and everything was my responsibility, from dealing with the emergencies, from ensuring that everyone on board was safe and to get to the proper place, if I was flying the round robin. I would have to navigate and I would have to make all the decisions.

Of course, it wasn’t all that bad. Because I was the junior AC, I was assigned to a position in the center of the flight. I wouldn’t be given the round robin or any single ship missions until I had a little more experience. Everything would be a learning situation.

Oddly, one of those first lessons came from a friend. He said that my voice sounded too high on the radio. He suggested that I take a breath before making a radio call. It would make me sound calmer.

But here I was, just 19. I still had friends in high school, and others were freshmen in college. While they were still kids in the eyes of many, having fun, I was in a combat environment with the lives of those on my aircraft my responsibility. Of course, I didn’t have such deep thoughts at the time. I was just annoyed that becoming an AC had cost me twenty bucks.