He was desperate to stay out of Vietnam.
CHAPTER 6
Vietnam, My first war
“No, son - you're not up there alone - not with all the things you come through. You have the greatest co-pilot in the world even if there is just room for one in that fighter ship - no, you're not alone”.
- Colonel Robert L. Scott, Jr., USAAF, 'God Is My Copilot,' 1943
What choice did I have- fly for Air America or get my ass shot off in a plastic boat? I was elated, out of the freezer for warmer climes and no military crap to deal with. I never liked the military and wasn’t much for taking orders except for my own. So, this civilian deal was great. In fact, when I was interviewed and tested to become a NROTC recruit, the Officer, a Marine Colonel named Gentleman, told me that it was too bad I wasn’t a Jap. “Yes sir, and why is that sir? “Because young, man, the Jap navy had the perfect place for you.” “Sir,” I said? “Well son, according to your personality evaluations and test scores you would be the perfect candidate for a one man submarine.” That was that, I guess he found out that I didn’t play well with others. He was right.
After the phone conversation with the guys in Washington, the very next day I flew to DC, meeting with a Guy named Barbie and his boss, H. H. Dawson. Dawson, a four pack a day man, had a voice like a mechanical grating machine. Years Later, he died from throat cancer. The Feds don’t mess around. Three days later I was in Taiwan for a six week school followed by Bangkok for another school followed by a training program in Jungle survival and other esoteric things… like the big black pill we found in our survival vests. The instructor said that we shouldn’t mistake this for a gum ball… he had only one hand and had crash landed in some God forsaken place and survived for weeks on monkey tails and such.. We listened to him, I can tell you.
After all this ground school, we moved into the flight training. The first plane that I flew for Air America was the Pilatus Porter. The Porter was a “one trick aircraft.” It could take off and land in an amazingly short distance. I did everything I could to stay away from it. The Porter has only a single engine. So, what’s wrong with that, you might ask? Well, for one thing, it’s built by the French and for another, the yella-fellas on the ground in black PJ’s weren’t very nice. In fact, they were down right hostile .One of our planes had been shot down shortly before I got there, the crew was skinned alive, gasoline was poured on their raw bodies and they were tied across the hot aluminum wing and left to die a really painful death. No one talked about this but we all knew about it.
The Porter, with its highly unreliable Turbomeca French engine, was to be avoided at all costs. I however, as fate would have it, was not lucky enough to stay away from this tremendously ugly aircraft and found myself in ground school in Bangkok and soon thereafter, in flight training.
The days in Taiwan were fun and have remained pleasantly in my memory. In Taipei, we had uniforms made by a local Taylor, Peter Woo, whose shop was across from the President Hotel where we stayed for several weeks. One of the guys, L.J. Broussard, a Cagin from Louisiana said to the tailor “Missa Woo, ah really lik China- cuz all you guys a’ smaller than ah am.” While telling Mr. Woo this, he was laughing and poking his middle finger while holding a big cigar, into Mr. Woo’s skinny chest to emphasize the point. “Woo, listin, ah wants red silk liners understand, an ah’ pay more now you heah- heah’s an extra fifty bucks now do it all nice now, heah? “ - all the while with more finger poking. The little Tailor most certainly did “Heah” but obviously didn’t like this brash American and didn’t deliver the Cajun’s uniforms until we were on the bus heading to the airport.
When we got to the hotel in Bangkok, LJ ran upstairs, saying- “Robbit, pleas jus bring up m’bags- ah gotta try on m’uniforms, heah?” Sure, I said and gathered our luggage while the Cajun ran up the stairs holding the box with his uniforms. When I go to the top of the stairs I could hear this screaming coming from the open door down the hall. “Gawddam, Gawdamm that damm Chinaman, Gawdammit.” there was this bizarre shadow dancing on the opposite wall from the open door- a kind of flashing that was somewhat in tempo with the “hellayshus” cursing and bellowing emanating from the room.
When the bellman and I reached the door we saw LJ surrounded with pieces of torn open cardboard boxes and wrapping paper, shirts and pants were laying all over the floor. He had one leg in a pair of grey uniform pants and one arm in a matching shirt and was dancing on one leg in a circle trying to put his other arm and leg in. He was shouting and spitting mad with a red face mouthing an unending stream of vile curses in horrible French and mumbling something about “the dirty SOB Chinaman sewed my GD shirts sleeves and pants shut.”
This was Woo’s revenge- every pair or pants, all the shirts and coats were sewn shut- even the pockets were stitched closed. They did however have lovely red silk linings. I did my best not to laugh- but I had to drop the bags and get downstairs to do it.
We were in Bangkok for about four weeks. We memorized every system on the Porter, PT6A and Twin beach, C-45, as we would be assigned to one of them when we got to Saigon.
We were about twenty feet’ over the river descending into the river bank when Jake put the 550 HP turboprop into full reverse and begin puling the long porter nose through the horizon to about twenty degrees nose up. We were rapidly settling into the reeds as the lift was sucked from the wing by the massive application of full reverse power. Jake had the stick pulled full aft with his toes pressing the brakes when we hit the bank with a five hundred foot a minute rate of descent. I was scared shitless. The aircraft, blowing dust and reeds everywhere, rolled about two hundred feet into the reeds before stopping. We were alive.
Jake taxied forward a few hundred feet, turned the beast around facing the river and applied full Take off power. We accelerated back down the path of flattened reeds, reaching about forty five knots and bumped into the air just over the river. The tires didn’t touch the water, but it was close. Jake was laughing and said, “OK, now that’s how you do it.”
I flew the Porter around with Jake and other instructors for a couple of weeks before they turned me loose. The porter was a one trick aircraft; it took off and landed short. Real short, a STOL aircraft, “Short Take Off and Landing.
So, how do you fly a single engine aircraft all over Vietnam where the bad guys might skin you alive if they got their hands on you? The Turbomecca engine was not the most dependable power plant. It had a couple of internal design flaws that made it even more questionable. The first six months it was just luck that I survived- I made every mistake in the book. The first thing I learned was that in a single engine aircraft the most important lesson to remember is that there is no substitute for altitude- the higher you are, the further you can glide And the longer you live when the engine quits.
The Turbomecca engine does quit -mine quit twice. One failure was caused by a ruptured seal causing all the engine oil to blow out in about ten seconds. The oil pressure went to zero, temps climbed and the windshield was covered with oil. I had visibility out the sides but very limited forward. I was climbing through eight thousand feet when the seal let loose- I had the engine secured and the prop feathered in seconds. Interestingly, the prop did feather……
The Porter was silent, only the sounds of the slipstream as we settled toward the ground at something like three hundred feet per minute. I headed toward some cumulous clouds