To the Limit: An Air Cav Huey Pilot in Vietnam

4 My First Engine Failure

7 5 My First Engine Failure 4 June 30, 1967 The time I spend reading Pat’s letters is special for me. As I read her words, she and home seem close and I can block out, for a few moments at least, my loneliness. “You’ll be on stand down tomorrow, Johnson.” A voice abruptly cuts into my thoughts. “Oh, yeah?” I reply sharply, before looking up from my seat on the edge of my cot. Rick Peterson, one of the older aircraft commanders , is looking at me. “Got to give you a checkride! You’ll have to do some autorotations and demonstrate some basic piloting skills. Meet me in operations at 0800 hours . . . OK?” “Sure,” I answer meekly. Rick leaves the tent and disappears into the darkness. A sense of apprehension fills me, and I wonder why I’m getting a checkride. I stand up so I can see Charbonnier, who is reading a novel in his living area. “Hey, Charbonnier, what does Rick want me for?” Charbonnier looks up from his book, squinting his eyes over his reading light. “What is it?” he asks. Obviously he has been so deep into the novel that he hasn’t registered my question. “Rick Peterson just came by to tell me I won’t be flying tomorrow . He wants me to go with him to do some autorotations.” “Oh. That’s mandatory. Rick is the company instructor pilot, and 7 6 TO THE LIMIT all new guys have to have a refresher course with the IP. Don’t worry about it; it’s a good day off from the rest of this hysteria. Anyway, what’re they going to do if you fail the test? Send you to Vietnam?” Nonchalant, Charbonnier goes immediately back to his novel. The more I think about it, the better it sounds. It’s been a very long time since I’ve shot an autorotation. The practice will do me good, not to mention the late wake-up call. I relax and attempt to read Pat’s letter again, but instead, I find myself daydreaming about my first autorotation. It occurred at Fort Wolters during primary helicopter training, and I can remember Richard Johnson, my civilian IP, talking me through it just like it was yesterday. ■ “Candidate Johnson, I am about to demonstrate an autorotation. If you lose an engine in a helicopter, you must immediately push the collective all the way to the bottom. If properly rigged, the main rotor blade pitch, even if the collective is all the way down, is preset to a positive 3 degrees pitch. As you fall toward earth, this positive pitch angle will cause the main rotor system to continue rotating at normal rpm even though the engine has quit. Essentially, you can maneuver the helicopter just as you did in powered flight, with one main exception: you are going down and going down fast. This OH-23D Hiller will fall at a rate of about 1500 feet per minute, but a Huey in Vietnam, depending on how you are loaded, will fall even faster.” Richard had the Hiller lined up on one of the six runways at a remote stage field in the Texas countryside. He rolled off power in one very rapid motion, and the helicopter yawed slightly to the right. On the tachometer, the engine rpm needle went to zero while the rotor rpm stayed right where it was—this is referred to as splitting the needles. The bottom dropped out and the helicopter went heart-thumpingly quiet. We were hurtling out of the air. I glanced at the IVSI (instant vertical speed indicator) gauge that showed rate of climb and decent, and it verified what Richard had previously said— we were actually falling to earth at 1500 feet per minute. And I thought I had been scared before. The paved runway was coming up fast, and Richard made slight adjustments to compensate for a crosswind. At the last moment, Richard pulled rearward on the cyclic to bleed off airspeed and at the same time, to stop our 7 7 MY FIRST ENGINE FAILURE forward motion, he pulled upward on the collective. He was using the inertia in the blade system in lieu of engine power to cushion our landing—there would be no hovering here! With only a slight thump, the helicopter arrived on the ground just as the main rotor system...