Flying a Helicopter?

[dmccarty]

Dan, flying across Iraq we often were 100ft or so, which seems much lower when going that fast. In early Spring the Shepards take their herds out into the desert to graze. They didn't much like us flying over them. Almost always scattered their herds.

I don't know how low we were over the Everglades but we really were just skimming on top of the saw grass. If the pilot had had a wiffle fart we would have left a smear in the ground. :laughing::laughing::laughing:

My wife has a family member who was Medivac copter pilot in Viet Nam. He got shot down three times but lived to tell the tale though one crash really messed him up. The family had a diary operation when he was in the Army and one time he flew a Huey home and landed in the pasture. The family was glad to see him but his uncles and father were ticked because the cows did not give milk for a day or two. :shocked:

This guy is the Luckiest Man in the world. Might be good luck or bad luck though. Three shoot downs in copters but he survived. A decade or so ago, he bought a new car and then hit a herd of deer which totaled the car but he survived. Shortly after that he was working on his roof. Alone. He was on a ladder on the back deck which has multiple layers to get into the house. He fell onto the deck and had a compound fracture of a leg AND an arm. :shocked: He had to crawl across the deck, up some stairs, I think down stairs again then back up stairs to get into the house. :shocked: Course, he had a hard time standing to open the door to get inside. :confused2: Then he had to crawl across the kitchen floor to stand up again to use the phone. :shocked: But he survived.

He likes to BBQ, especially whole hogs, and he has a garage stuff full of different sized BBQs. One day we were at this house, well, for a BBQ, and I noticed he was a bit red in the face, on parts of his arms and legs. A few days earlier he had lit a BBQ and it, or one of the other tanks, had been leaking. There was a flash from the leaky propane and his exposed skin had gotten a nice healthy red hue. :shocked::laughing::laughing::laughing: But he survived.

Later,
Dan

 

[ovrszd]

Wouldn't want to stand near him during a lightning storm huh!!!!!!

I've got a poem that would reflect his Vietnam service, I'll try to find it.

 

[ovrszd]

Here it is.

The Man In the Doorway

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in a flare,rocked forward and we raced for the open doorways. This was always the worst forus, we couldn't hear anything and our backs were turned to the tree line. Thebest you could hope for was a sign on the face of the man in the doorway, leaningout waiting to help with a tug or to lay down some lead. Sometimes you couldglance quickly at his face and pick up a clue as to what was about to happen.We would pitch ourselves in headfirst and tumble against the scuffed rivetedaluminum, grab for a handhold and will that son-of-a-***** into the air. Sometimes the deck was slick with blood orworse,
sometimes something had been left in the shadows under the web seats, sometimesthey landed in a shallow river to wash them out. Sometimes they were late, sometimes...theywere parked in some other LZ with their rotors turning a lazy arc, a ghost crewstrapped in once too often, motionless, waiting for their own lift, their ownbags, once too often into the margins. The getting on and the getting off werethe worst for
us but this was all he knew, the man in the doorway, he was always standingthere in the noise, watching, urging...swinging out with his gun, grabbing theblack
plastic and heaving, leaning out and spitting, spitting the taste away, asthough it would go away...

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in a flare,rocked forward and began to kick the boxes out, bouncing against the skids,piling up on each other, food and water, and bullets...a thousand poundsof C's, warm water and
rounds, 7.62mm, half a ton of life and death. And when the deck was clear, wewould pile the bags, swing them against their weight and throw them through the
doorway, his doorway, onto his deck and nod and he'd speak into that little micand they'd go nose down and lift into their last flight, their last extraction. Sometimes he'd raise a thumb or perhaps afist or sometimes just a sly, knowing smile, knowing we were staying and he wasgoing but also knowing he'd be back, he'd be back in a blink, standing in the swirlingnoise and the rotor wash, back to let us rush through his door and skid acrosshis deck and will that son-of-a-***** into the air.

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in a flare,rocked forward, kicked out the boxes and slipped the litter across the deck andsometimes he'd lean down and hold the IV and brush the dirt off of a bloodlessface, or hold back the
flailing arms and the tears, a thumbs-up to the right seat and you're onlyminutes away from the white sheets and the saws and the plasma.

They came in low and hot, close to the trees and dropped their tail in aflare, rocked forward and we'd never hear that sound again without feeling our stomachsgo just a bit weightless, listen just a bit closer for the gunfire and look upfor the man in the
doorway.

Igot this poem, if you want to call it that, when in Vietnam. I don稚 know who the author is. Doesn稚 really matter. What痴 important is to hope he still is ableto hear that sound today.

 

[Redneck in training]

Helicopter pilot lived for danger | News OK

I remember this case. I used to live near by the place where the last attempt happened.

 

[Kyle_in_Tex]

Helicopter pilot lived for danger | News OK

I remember this case. I used to live near by the place where the last attempt happened.

great story!

 

[tractorshopper]

The helicopters were equipped with a flare system that would fire if any type of electronic sighting device was pointed at them while inflight. Idea being if fired upon the rocket would track the falling flares. Was very, very common to see this in/around Baghdad.

View attachment 485413

Commonly referred to as "chaff". We had it on our HH-60H's. That's the Navy Combat search and rescue configuration of the Seahawks. A SEAL team worked with our squadron from time to time and that was what they would fly in with door guns, etc. We also had SH-60F's, which were set up for more standard duty including submarine tracking, search and rescue diving missions, transport, etc.

Here's a pic of my squadron's plane, one of the CSAR set ups. You'll see the chaff pod on the tail cone near the fuselage.

 

[ovrszd]

David, "chaff" is a great term for it. Hadn't heard that before.

I often wonder how much different things would be without rotary wing aircraft. Think about all the variations we have discussed in this thread alone. We have barely touched the commercial uses.

 

[dmccarty]

Here it is.

The Man In the Doorway

I don't know who wrote that either but I have read it before.

What some of those Medivac crews did was unreal.....

I am a voracious reader and have always read history along with some fiction, mostly science fiction, years ago. I stopped reading fiction since there are so many things that have happened for real who needs made up stuff. If people knew about these events they would consider the actions works of fiction. If what some, well many people, have done were made into movies, nobody would believe it happened.

Later,
Dan

 

[ovrszd]

I don't know who wrote that either but I have read it before.

What some of those Medivac crews did was unreal.....

I am a voracious reader and have always read history along with some fiction, mostly science fiction, years ago. I stopped reading fiction since there are so many things that have happened for real who needs made up stuff. If people knew about these events they would consider the actions works of fiction. If what some, well many people, have done were made into movies, nobody would believe it happened.

Later,
Dan

I've watched two movies in the last couple yeasr that impacted me (militarily) heavily. First was American Sniper. Second was Lone Survivor (might have the name wrong, might be Sole Survivor). Both are at least based on truth. Both will cause you to quietly reflect. I saw American Sniper in a theater. When the movie was over everyone left eerily quiet. Watched Lone Survivor at home and talked to the TV thru most of it. "Don't do that", "gotta move, move", "this ain't good, not good at all". My wife quietly watched the movie, and me.

 

[tractorshopper]

"Unbroken" is another great movie. I read the book about a year before the movie came out. The movie was good, but really couldn't do justice to the book. There was so much more in the book that couldn't possibly be added or developed in the movie just due to time constraints alone. What the greatest generation went through was nearly unbelievable to us today.