by Lew Jennings
Each training day would begin before dawn and end well after dark.
And along the way I would gradually learn that the Drill Sergeants were not diabolical maniacs at all, but were actually the Army’s “Best”, physically and mentally tough professionals who guided and mentored us to achieve what we had thought was impossible.
Over those eight weeks, the job of the Drill Sergeant was to turn us rag-tag weaklings into combat-ready soldiers. And they did just that.
I will remember my Drill Sergeant for the rest of my life and have silently thanked him many times for helping me to become a good soldier and even better person.
I graduated boot camp as a Private E-1 in September 1967 and was awarded Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) 11B, (pronounced ‘Eleven Bravo’), Combat Infantryman.
I was now a certified killer, able to carry a rucksack and rifle into combat and designated an expert in rifle marksmanship, machine gun and bayonet.
I couldn’t wait to attend flight school.
The real heroes of the Vietnam War, those carrying a Rucksack and a Rifle, saw up to 240 days of combat in a one-year tour and casualty rates of four in ten or worse.
CHAPTER THREE
ARMY AVIATION
Leonardo da Vinci dreamed of it back in 1493. He even designed a model that he thought could accomplish it. He called it “The Air Screw” which looked like a screw that could, if spinning rapidly enough, accomplish the dream; Vertical flight.
Igor Sikorsky (1889-1972) is considered the father of the helicopter having flown the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 he invented and constructed back in 1939.
Born in Russia, son of Russian psychologist Ivan and physician mother Maria, as a boy he studied the life and works of Leonardo da Vinci and Jules Verne. He built his first rubber band powered helicopter in 1901 at age 11. In May 1909, he began designing a real helicopter and conducted testing later that same year. Despite solving many technical problems, he realized the aircraft would never fly and disassembled it in October 1909.
“I had learned enough to recognize that with the existing state of the art engines, materials, and most of all, the shortage of money and lack of experience, I would not be able to produce a successful helicopter at that time.”
Sikorsky turned his focus to airplanes. His first airplane design, the S-1, used a 15 horsepower Anzani engine that could not lift the aircraft. His second 25 hp Anzani model S-2 flew on June 16, 1910 at a height of a few feet. The following year he would fly his own two-place airplane, the 25hp S-5, earning Pilots license #64 from the Federation Aeronautique International in 1911.
His next airplane, the S-6 held three passengers and was selected as the winner of the Moscow aircraft exhibition in February 1912. Igor would go on to help build and test fly the world’s first four-engine airplane, airliner and bomber in 1914.
After World War I, Igor Sikorsky immigrated to the United States in 1919, formed the Sikorsky Manufacturing Company in Roosevelt, New York in 1923 and produced America’s first twin-engine airplane, the 14-passenger S-29.
The Sikorsky Manufacturing Company moved to Stratford, Connecticut in 1929 and became part of the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. Igor Sikorsky would become famous for his design and manufacture of the S-42 “Clipper” flying boats used by Pan American World Airways to open Trans-Atlantic and Pacific air travel.
Sikorsky also continued his earlier work on vertical flight, eventually culminating in the first (tethered) flight of the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300 on September 14, 1939, with the first free flight occurring eight months later on May 24, 1940.
Sikorsky's success with the VS-300 led to the R-4 which became the world's first mass-produced helicopter in 1942 and would lead to the first recorded helicopter medical evacuation in Burma in 1944.
Sikorsky's final VS-300 rotor configuration, comprising a single main rotor and a single anti-torque tail rotor, would become the most popular helicopter configuration still being used in most helicopters produced today. Although, at this writing in 2017, Sikorsky corporation has introduced new technology with two main rotors stacked on top of each other and spinning in opposite directions, so no need for tail rotor and, instead, put a “pusher” propeller at the rear allowing speeds of over 200 knots – a new world record!
As previously noted, Sikorsky helicopters accomplished the first recorded combat search and rescue in 1944 in Burma. His helicopter designs would become the primary search and rescue aircraft for the Navy and the Air Force in the ensuing decades and the Marines would employ Sikorsky helicopters to carry Presidents from Truman and Eisenhower to the present.
Sikorsky’s UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter would become the primary utility helicopter for the US Army in 1979, with many variants of that design providing specialized capabilities for all the Services and the Special Operations Command to this day.
I myself would be honored in 1975 as an Air Cavalry Captain assigned to the 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment in Nuremberg, Germany, to host Igor Sikorsky’s oldest son, Sergei Sikorsky, as a visitor and guest speaker at the inauguration of the “Red Catcher” chapter of the Army Aviation Association.
Igor Sikorsky enabled us to live the dream of vertical flight.
Other pioneers in vertical flight followed in his footsteps, developing incredible machines that allowed us to accomplish the unthinkable.
Frank Piasecki developed large tandem rotor helicopters that could move enormous amounts of people and cargo, move huge towers and equipment to the tops of buildings, and lift logged trees from mountain sides in minutes.
Larry Bell and Arthur Young developed the Bell 47 small bubble helicopter that would save thousands of lives on the battlefield as portrayed so well in the TV series MASH. The civilian version of that helicopter was used extensively for transporting people, equipment and cargo as well as crop dusting.
Bell would later develop the UH-1 “Huey” that would become the most combat proven aircraft in the history of warfare, accumulating nearly 10 million hours of combat flight time and performing over 500,000 medical evacuations during the Vietnam War.
Bell also developed the AH-1 Cobra, the first helicopter ever designed as a purely attack helicopter for combat operations.
Helicopters and their crews have save thousands of lives on land and sea. They are used throughout all the military services for hundreds of different missions.
And the helicopter continues to save untold lives in the civilian sector, from law enforcement and firefighting to search and rescue and medical transport.
It was little wonder that the Army, stripped of its aviation assets when the Air Force became a separate Service in 1947, started looking at the helicopter to move men, equipment and supplies on the battlefield.
Helicopters could magically transport anyone and anything anywhere on the battlefield within minutes. That was the concept. Now all that had to be done was to come up with the helicopters, tactics and techniques that could accomplish it.
The problem in 1947 was that there were no helicopters in the Army. And the few that existed in the military had very limited capabilities.
The Army was also severely restricted in its ability to add aviation assets, as that was now a responsibility of the Air Force.
The US Army had developed aviation since 1907 and kept the US Army Air Corps as an integral branch, like infantry or artillery. Aviation assets were usually divided up and assigned to ground commands.
General Billy Mitchell who was the Army’s Deputy Director of Aviation Services back in the 1920’s argued for independence of aviation. He believed that air power alone would win the next big war and needed to be autonomous; operated and developed solely by aviators experienced in the new technology.
General Mitchell became vehement in his views and after proving that bombers could sink battle ships, which was rejected by the Navy, wrote a paper he released to the media accusing Army and Navy leadership of “Incompetency, criminal negligence and almost treasonable administration of the natio
nal defense.”
He was famously court martialed for his views in 1925 and resigned from the military. He would remain a hero to many and his concepts continued to surface in the military for many years.
In 1935 all Army flying aviation assets were centralized in one General Headquarters of the Air Force. This was the first step towards a separate Air Force.
President Roosevelt had become a staunch supporter of air power at the time and by 1940 called for production of 50,000 planes a year in the build-up to World War II.
By 1942 the US Army Air Forces had been created and had equal prominence as a separate combat command with the Army and Navy on the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The use of numbered Air Forces was instituted for decentralized organization and command of aviation assets.
Strategic bombing became the strategy of the Air Forces in both the European and Pacific Theaters.
By the end of World War II, The US Army Air Force was itself autonomous as a separate organization and the United States Air Force was officially established on September 18, 1947. The National Security Act of 1947 also established the Department of Defense with three internal military Departments; Army, Navy and now Air Force.
Five-Star General of the Army Henry Harley ‘Hap’ Arnold, who had commanded the 20th Air Force in the Pacific and all US Army Air Forces during the war, would later be designated General of the Air Force in 1949. He was one of only five Generals to hold five-star rank alongside Marshall, Eisenhower, MacArthur and Bradley. Arnold would become the only person ever to hold both General of the Army and General of the Air Force ranks.
General Carl Spaatz, Arnold’s protégé and commander of the 8th Air Force in Europe during World War II, would become the first Chief of Staff of the Air Force.
With the establishment of the Air Force as a separate service, Army aviation for the most part had been reduced to small two-seat reconnaissance airplanes made by Piper, Stinson, Aeronca and Cessna used for artillery spotting.
The Air Force had taken over responsibility for all aviation support to the Army including transport of troops, material and supplies and close air support to troops in contact with the enemy.
The Army was prohibited from developing aviation for roles that the Air Force now had responsibility, except helicopters. The Army naturally started focusing on the use of helicopters in combat and combat support roles.
The Army received their first helicopters in 1947; 13 OH-13 Sioux helicopters from Bell Aircraft Corporation. The OH-13’s were the small bubble helicopters depicted in the TV series MASH that saw extensive service a few years later in Korea. The OH-13 would be used to conduct over 20,000 medical evacuations during the Korean conflict and be credited with helping reduce the combat casualty death rate by half, compared to World War II.
The rugged terrain of Korea forced the Army to increasingly look for helicopter support to be able to accomplish a variety of missions; medical evacuation, artillery observation, command and control, and movement of troops and supplies. The Army deployed the first cargo helicopters in Korea, the CH-19 Chickasaw made by Sikorsky.
The Army was constantly battling with the Air Force in the 1950s and ‘60s for aviation assets to support the ground commanders. The Army, on its own, continued to add more and larger helicopters and even started adding airplanes to the mix including a large tactical transport plane; the de Havilland CV-2 Caribou.
The Army was also prohibited from arming aircraft for close air support for the troops. However, there was no prohibition against using helicopters for that purpose.
The Army started testing helicopter “gunships” to escort the troop-carrying helicopters and provide close air support to soldiers in combat. The first armed helicopters were deployed in 1962.
The competition for aviation assets between the Army and Air Force came to a head in 1966.
The two Chiefs of Staff, Army General Harold K. Johnson and Air Force General John P. McConnell, signed the Johnson-McConnell Agreement on 6 April 1966, whereby the Army would agree to relinquish its tactical transport airplanes to the Air Force and the Air Force would agree to relinquish its claims to most forms of rotary wing aircraft.
The Army by then had amassed a huge fleet of helicopters as more troops were being deployed to the Vietnam conflict.
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had ordered a review of Army Aviation in 1962 to determine how helicopters could best be used in the insurgent warfare of Vietnam.
In response to the Secretary’s orders, Army General Hamilton Howze formed the Howze Board and conducted a series of operational tests using large formations of troops and helicopters to conduct combat operations that became known as “Air Assault”.
General Howze recommended entire Army Divisions be equipped with hundreds of helicopters and converted to “Air Assault” Divisions to conduct this new type of airmobile warfare.
Various types of helicopters, big and small, would be used to find and fix the enemy, transport troops into battle, transport equipment and supplies, provide armed escort and close air support, and conduct medical evacuations.
Air Force Chief of Staff Curtis LeMay vigorously opposed the findings of the Howze Board, stating that the Air Force “should operate everything that flies, right down to the last puddle jumper.”
Secretary of Defense McNamara rejected General LeMay’s objections (thank God) and accepted the Howze Board recommendations.
Shortly thereafter, the 1st Cavalry Division was transformed into an Air Assault Division and renamed the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) or more commonly known as the 1st Air Cavalry Division.
The Division was equipped with the latest in new helicopters.
UH-1 Iroquois “Hueys” to carry troops and supplies and perform medical evacuations.
CH-47 Chinooks to haul large amounts of equipment and supplies.
CH-54 Tarhe Skycranes to carry the largest loads.
The Division would later receive OH-6 Cayuse Light Observation Helicopters to conduct reconnaissance operations and AH-1 Cobra Attack Helicopters to provide gunship support.
Now organized with 16,000 men and over 400 helicopters the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) started deploying to Vietnam in August of 1965.
The 101st Airborne Division followed suit, reorganizing as an Airmobile Division, and deployed to Vietnam in 1968.
The Army ramped up recruitment and training of helicopter Pilots, mechanics and crewmembers to meet the rapidly growing demand.
Industry also ramped up development and production of helicopters for the Army.
Bell Helicopter was producing thousands of UH-1 ‘Hueys’ and developing the world’s first attack helicopter, the AH-1 Cobra.
Boeing-Vertol was producing hundreds of huge tandem-rotor CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopters.
Hughes Tool Company was producing hundreds of OH-6 Cayuse light observation helicopters (LOH), or “Loaches”.
Sikorsky was building dozens of the giant CH-54 Tarhe Skycrane heavy lift helicopters.
All these helicopters featured jet-like turbine engines instead of piston engines and other advanced engineering and materials to go higher, farther, faster and carry more cargo.
Army aviation was bursting at the seams and, with nearly 12,000 total aircraft in 1967, was rapidly on its way to becoming the largest air force in the free world.
Igor Sikorsky, “Father of the Helicopter” 1889-1972
Flying the Sikorsky VS-300
Sikorsky CH-19 Chickasaw 1949
Sikorsky CH-34 Chocktaw 1955
Sikorsky CH-53 Sea Stallion 1966
Sikorsky HH-53 Jolly Green Giant 1967
Sikorsky CH-54 Tarhe 1962
Kaman HH-43 Huskie/Pedro 1962
Piaseki CH-21 Shawnee 1952
Boeing Vertol CH-47 Chinook 1962
Arthur Young and Bell Helicopter Engineers 1944
Bell OH-13 Sioux 1945
Bell UH-1 Huey 1962
Bell UH-1 Gunship
Bell A
H-1 Cobra Attack Helicopter 1967
Hughes OH-6 Light Observation Helicopter 1966
CHAPTER FOUR
FORT WOLTERS
By the time I arrived at Fort Wolters, Texas in November of 1967, this sprawling military complex was running at full capacity, operating 24 hours a day, with tens of thousands of support personnel both military and civilian.
The sky was filled with hundreds of helicopters as they formed long lines, like weaving chains, to land at nearby heliports with the air reverberating to the sounds of thousands of rotor blades whirring overhead.
I gaped in awe and wondered how so many aircraft could operate in such close proximity without running into each other.
In advanced training and combat I would learn what real “close proximity” was; overlapping rotor blades with the helicopter next to you while descending into landing zones (LZs) in mountainous jungle terrain, with rockets exploding all around from the gunships prepping the LZ and the enemy trying to shoot you down.
For now, I was mesmerized by the spectacle of so many aircraft filling the west Texas sky.
This was the Army’s Primary Helicopter School, where students learned the basics of flying helicopters in small two-seat trainers over a period of four months, before heading to Alabama or Georgia for an additional four months of advance training.
Fort Wolters is located 50 miles west of Fort Worth in the rolling hills and flat terrain of west Texas near the small town of Mineral Wells. The area provided lots of room for pesky helicopters to roam and was an ideal location for training helicopter Pilots.
Originally known as Camp Wolters, the base was one of the largest infantry replacement training centers in the country during World War II, credited with training some 200,000 infantrymen.
