How about we make a short story long. In April of 69 we were just getting out of the Plei-Trap. Still had lots of ships damaged and not many flyable. They had sent five or six ships to AnKhe on RON because the 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry had moved there.

My ship had come out of PE and I was flying with Mr. Hudkins. After about four hours of flight time he said that the tail rotor pedals felt funny and he thought they were binding. Hud never complained about a ship. The tail boom could be falling off before he would say something. I disconnected the mag brake and the bind was still there. I then greased the tail rotor and problem went away. We finished the day and I wrote the ship up that night.

Next morning I found the famous "Checked and found OK" in the log book. We took off and again about four hours later it did the same thing. I greased the tail rotor again and wrote it up that night. Next morning it was the same thing. Checked and found OK. So I pulled the pitch change links and grounded the aircraft. As I rotated the one blade it would seem to catch on something and start to bind.

I went to the hangar and the MO went nuts. As far as he was concerned the ship was fine. We had gotten a new TI from the 155th in a Deros shuffle. A few months early I was on a convoy control mission between Pleiku and Bam Me Thout. It was late in the afternoon and we were refueling for the return trip to Holloway when I noticed grease around the engine inlet. I had the pilots shut down the ship and discovered that the short shaft was slinging grease. By the time I would have pulled the shaft and repacked it we would not get out of there until dark. So we RON there that night. The next morning I pulled the shaft and as I was getting ready to repack it, I discovered some small cracks in the out board seal. The TI was this same guy which was now in our company. He told the MO that I was a pretty good crew chief and if I said something was wrong there something was wrong.

We pulled the tail rotor and when we pulled the hub apart we found a flat spot in one of the bearings. As long as it was full of grease it was fine. After about fours the bearing would rotate and start to bind. It was a new hub which was installed during the last PE. After that any time I wrote something up on my ship it was never corrected with a "Checked and found OK".