Sorry to interrupt the jokes with this but I thought you guys may be interested in a conversation that Calvin Bohannon and I were having offline.
Start at the first message at the bottom which is not really the first one but its the first coherent one .
Calvin,
Interesting that you would remember the maintenance part of the job so vividly. I had put most of that into the gray area of my memory but you talking about it brought some of it back up. I remember thinking about the Jesus nut and wondering how someone could design something with no backup where a single point of failure could be so important in keeping us alive. Only later when I was involved in designing mechanical systems myself and worrying about strength of materials etc. did I realize that the Jesus nut was probably the strongest part of the helicopter. Basically we were screwed if any part of the rotor head broke. I don't remember a single time when there was a structural failure in the rotor system other that those caused by bullets etc.
I can remember all the times cutting safety wire pulling screens and filters checking them, finding nothing putting them back rewiring them and saying to myself. Damn it, its 11:30 at night, they kept us flying until way after dark tonight all the pilots have been sitting around drinking for two or three hours already and I'm still out here looking at these damn screens that are never dirty. I start thinking about skipping some of them maybe every other time. Cutting corners. I'm tired and I have to get up at 5:30 the next morning to start this all over again. I'm the last one still out there. Then I look over and see Tom Frankenfield still working so I don't feel quite so bad. Then I realize he was flying with Dobbs today and he probably volunteered to fly hot beer to some grunts on some mountain top after dark so that's why Tom's out here so late or is it just Tom works harder than the rest of us. So now I'm feeling pissed. So I'm feeling the pressure to cut corners again get in there and have a couple of beers with the guys. Then Tom gets done and comes over and asks if I need help finishing up. Together we knock it off pretty quick. Thanks to Tom the thought of cutting corners quickly fades away for now. I feel good about being a crew chief and think that my efforts are actually worth something. I remember getting and giving this kind of help many times and it made a lot of difference in getting the job done right and with keeping our spirits up.
I don't remember ever cutting corners on any maintenance but the pressure was always there. Until!
Flying out of Kontum heading for NhaTrang ( I think) at 3000 ft Alligator Triple 7 had an engine failure. We auto-rotated to a very steep and very narrow dirt road, hit the tail first but the skid took most of the impact smashed into the hill sliding downhill flattening the main skids and sliding to a stop. No one hurt in a perfect one point crash landing by Mr Babbon. We had an Air Force band on board with all their instruments and one guy was sitting next to me in the back seat because the instruments took up most of the cargo space. When the engine quit there was a very loud noise coming from the engine and Mr Babbon had dropped pitch to set up the auto-rotation so the guy was a freaking out. I remember him asking me what was wrong and what I said to him. Very calmly I said "Its alright, the engine just quit and we're looking for place to land." The guy looked at me like I was nuts. Maybe I was, but one thing was for sure I wasn't as calm as I made him believe. The road was on the right side of the helicopter so we couldn't see it from our vantage point and all you could see was trees below us. It took awhile to get down to the ground. When we did the gunner and I pulled the 60s and set them up. I handed my wire stock m2 carbine to the Air Force guy wondering if it was a good idea for him to have a weapon in his hands. Looked like he would shoot us or himself by accident if he could figure out where the trigger was. Babbon send out a mayday on the guard frequency and we had help within 20 min. There were a lot of Vietnamese people who seemed to materialize on the road ahead of us looking curious. I have no idea where all these people came from because you couldn't see anyone in this area from the air. There were maybe a 100 of them showed up within five minutes. At least they stayed about 100 yards away. I was more concerned about the ones we couldn't see. We were finally picked up by an Air Force Husky Helicopter. Strange little ship. Alligator Triple 7 was picked up and brought back to Holloway by a Hook (Chinook) and the good news was we got a new more powerful engine put into Triple 7. The cause of the engine failure was said to be the "Tach/generator", never did get a satisfactory story on that. However, I never again had a single thought about cutting corners with any of the inspections.
Jim Gator Triple 7
On Jun 15, 2004, at 6:51 AM, Bohannon, Calvin wrote:
Jim,
I noticed the picture in your CD presentation of the flight returning.
I think we may have been in Kontum at the same time. Do you remember the
slick shot full of holes that landed in the grass at Dakto because of severe
1:1 vib, pouring JP4 out the bottom and no electrical power? I was the guy
who went over and pulled the inspection plate of the CE side of the
transmission island and shut down the main fuel solenoid valve to kill it.
Or do you remember Chuck Conners visiting us in Kontum and the steak dinner
we all had? We picked the steak and grilled them on that large pit and
pigged out.
My niece is married to a Vietnamese gentleman. He left the south with his
father and family in '72'at the age of 12. His father owned warehouses in
Saigon that stored and imported goods for the war, so they had to get out or
die. My niece and he have been back to Vietnam twice so far and I think I
may try to go sometime in the future with them. He still speaks the language
a little.
We flew from dusk to dawn with few complaints at 19 & 20 yrs. Old, with
responsibility of a crew of 4 most of the time and more some of the time.
Sometimes I wonder how we did it. I don't know about you, but those midnight
intermediates with a flashlight in your mouth, changing detector o-rings and
replacing oil and grease ... Then jumping in the next morning and off we
would go. Remember how you would imagine you felt a high freq or wondered if
you put the o-ring in or could just imagine grease slinging out of the
hangar bearings? It would drive me crazy until I could land, shut down and
go back over what I did the night before. The order of my greatest fears
was: 1, my own maintenance. 2, pilot error, last, being shot out of the sky.
Do you remember Jerry Yarborough, Cartwright, Donald Kieffer (Oky form
Okalahoma) or Jimmy Johnson (got wounded over by Plateau G area?
I can still hear Mr. Daniels calling in left down wind for runway 020 at
Holloway and the guy in the tower telling him that by the time he finished
announcing his approach he would be on the ground, nobody talked as slow as
he did on the raido. Great man to bad we lost him and the others over by
Jackson's hole.
By the way welcome home my friend and compatriot.
Calvin