by Ed Darack
Kirk’s unit flew almost nonstop during the following months, hauling troops, mail, engines, and more. “We called it ‘ass and trash,’ ” he said, noting that they even pulled out Iraqi prisoners of war.
After six months of flying in the Gulf War, he returned to the United States and joined a California National Guard Chinook unit, where a number of Vietnam-era CH-47 crewmen, off active duty and at that point full-time Guardsmen, continued to mentor him. Fighting fires with airborne water drops ranked as one of the most important domestic roles he and fellow Guardsmen played. Pat Hamburger also fought fires as a Nebraska Army National Guard Chinook crewman prior to his deployment to FOB Shank.
Members of the National Guard are some of the most skilled and capable individuals in the U.S. military. Their knowledge and experience, which translate into operational synergy like that seen in Extortion Company during its 2011 Afghan deployment, are honed at the High Altitude Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (HAATS), a tiny, little-known facility high in the Colorado Rockies that propagates capabilities throughout the entire U.S. military. It teaches skills that have saved untold numbers of pilots, crew, and passengers during wartime operations—and its story is closely tied to that of Extortion 17.
Fort Rucker, Alabama—where Bryan, Dave, and Buddy, like all other Army pilots, earned their wings—sits at an altitude ideal for helicopter performance: just 350 feet above mean sea level. Down here, near zero elevation, at the bottom of the atmosphere, gravity compresses air to its highest natural density, and helicopters’ turbine engines and rotor systems function optimally.
HAATS, in Gypsum, Colorado, however, is a high-altitude facility meant to refine and challenge pilots’ skills. At higher altitudes, the air thins out. Fewer molecules means that engines must work harder to produce sustained power and that rotors must spin at a greater angle of attack to maintain a given amount of thrust. Heavy loads further degrade the performance of rotorcraft (as do high temperatures). The pilots of Extortion 16 and 17, during flight operations in and out of the Tangi Valley, had to work more than a vertical mile above sea level, surrounded by rugged mountains and enemy fighters in darkness.
A rescue mission that took place above (and on) the slopes of Oregon’s Mount Hood on May 30, 2002, illustrates the dangers pilots and crews can face in such conditions, and why the high-altitude flying skills that are taught at HAATS are so vital to their survival. Several climbers had been reported killed or injured in a serious fall on a Mount Hood glacier. An HH-60 Pave Hawk of the Air Force Reserve Command’s 304th Rescue Squadron, commanded by Captain Grant Dysle, was sent to retrieve them. Prior to launching, Dysle and his crew carefully scrutinized performance charts for their helicopter, comparing how much power they would need with what the engines could produce. Their computations showed they would have barely enough power, but they launched anyway.
The helicopter came to a hover over the climbers at 10,700 feet above sea level. The crew discovered that they had a greater safety margin than initially calculated due to an updraft of air. They lowered an Air Force pararescueman, or PJ (parajumper), onto the glacier with a cable, and he strapped an injured climber into a litter. Then tragedy nearly struck. The beneficial airflow turned into a tailwind, and the helicopter’s two General Electric T700 engines could not keep up with the needs of the rotor system.
“I noticed a change in pitch of the main rotor system,” Dysle recalled. Because of the power loss, the tail rotor, mechanically interlinked with the main rotor system, could not adequately counter the torque of the counterclockwise-rotating main rotor system, so the helicopter’s fuselage started to turn clockwise. With the climber attached to the hoist cable, the Pave Hawk was on the brink of falling out of the sky onto both the victims and the rescuer. Dysle nudged the Pave Hawk to the left with the last of the aircraft’s available power to avoid crashing onto those below, knocking the FE off balance. “He jumped up and dove for the emergency shear switch,” recalled Dysle. Activated by depressing a large red button next to the hoist, the shearing mechanism detonates a charge that explosively cuts the hoist cable with a bulletlike slug. The FE, hailed as a hero by Dysle for his actions, smacked it just in time. “Saved the survivor’s life,” Dysle added.
Dysle and the others then prepared to ditch the helicopter. The refueling probe hit first, scraping along the snow for a few feet, and then the rotors impacted, splitting apart, pieces shooting in all directions away from the helicopter. The Pave Hawk then rolled down the slope seven and a half times, ejecting two crewmen, both of whom survived due to the soft afternoon snow. Incredibly, all onboard sustained only minor injuries.
The entire incident, broadcast live and then replayed countless times throughout the world, remains among the most dramatic helicopter crashes in the history of aviation. The video also serves an important ongoing role in an educational curriculum that has saved untold numbers of lives: “The first thing we have the students do here at HAATS is to have them watch the video of that Pave Hawk crashing on Mount Hood,” said Lieutenant Colonel Tony Somogyi, commanding officer of HAATS. Nestled deep in the Rocky Mountains at 6,500 feet above sea level—just a few hundred feet higher than the LZ where Extortion 16 and 17 delivered the Ranger-led assault force—the Colorado Army National Guard base, with about 30 personnel, instructs helicopter pilots of all services through intensive five-day courses taught almost year-round. Bryan, Dave, Buddy, and most of the other pilots of Extortion Company all graduated from HAATS prior to their deployment to FOB Shank.
Begun in the mid-1980s, when the Colorado National Guard had identified a need to train Army helicopter pilots to fly in conditions other than the relatively mild ones of Fort Rucker, the base and its curriculum have evolved over the years, but its foundation remains the same. “Simply stated, we teach power management here at HAATS,” instructor pilot CW4 Darren Freyer said. “Our rallying cry is ‘High, hot, and heavy,’ in that we instruct students how to fly in low-density air—due to heat or altitude—and when an aircraft is loaded near its weight limit.” Any one of these factors, or a combination of the three, can cause a helicopter to fall out of the sky.
A simple equation lies at the core of power management, Freyer explained: power available minus power required. If the result is a negative number or zero, a helicopter cannot sustain flight under the given conditions. If it is positive by a small margin, pilots need to be cautious and keenly vigilant for external factors—such as the shifting winds on Mount Hood in 2002—that can push the result of their calculation into the red. During Extortion Company flights, particularly those into the Tangi Valley with full loads, HAATS-trained pilots paid very close attention to power management.
Somogyi, who flew OH-58D Kiowa Warriors for eight years in the active Army, including a deployment with the 4th Infantry Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, explained the broad utility engendered by training at HAATS: “We’re in the mountains, and we teach mountain flying techniques, but our power management skills can be used in all environments and at all altitudes.” Many Extortion pilots had flown over the deserts of Iraq prior to deploying to Afghanistan in 2011, where flying at low altitudes in severe heat made their HAATS training relevant. And the mountain flying techniques learned and honed at the base, where students land on the smallest of LZs at altitudes up to 12,000 feet above sea level, proved vital for Extortion Company pilots such as Bryan and Dave. “There are dragons in the thin and confused air around mountains, and you’re flying right into their lair when you operate in these conditions,” said Marine Colonel Anthony Bianca.
As they monitored their radios at FOB Shank for word of the next phase of their night’s mission, Extortion 17’s pilots, Dave and Bryan, did not yet know that the burden of the next phase of the flight would fall entirely on the two of them. Those they would transport, however, could not be in better hands. Dave had not only just completed a course at HAATS but also had been one of the facility’s most renowned instructors prior to his deployment to Shan
k. And Bryan had recently completed a HAATS course as well, impressing the lead instructor at the base—a rarity.
Recognized from the very beginning as an outstanding pilot, 31-year-old CW2 Bryan Joseph Nichols impressed all his instructors, not only those at HAATS. “The instructors at Rucker even pulled him aside and asked him if he’d already taken helicopter flying lessons,” said Buddy Lee. He had not, but he proved naturally gifted. “He was one of those born to fly—and born to fly military aircraft.”
The pilot-in-command of Extortion 17, Bryan hailed from a long lineage of military service. “My parents raised me and four other children on their farm,” said Doug Nichols, Bryan’s father, speaking from his and his wife, Cyndi’s, home in the rural northern Kansas town of Palco. Doug and his three brothers and one sister had all served in the military. “Bryan’s uncle Gordon worked as a crew chief in the famed Flying Tigers in World War II,” Doug recalled. Based behind enemy lines to help the Chinese during that stint, Gordon also had worked as an FE, loading and unloading fuel and ammunition on C-47 Skytrains that flew the infamous “Hump” route over the Himalayas, and then he’d briefly served as a gunner on a B-25 Mitchell bomber, participating in attack runs against Japanese soldiers along the Yangtze River. Doug’s sister, Rosalie, had served in the U.S. Navy, overseeing maintenance issues at Camp Shelton, in Little Creek, Virginia. Carl, another of Bryan’s uncles, had fought in France as part of the 42nd Infantry Division at the tail end of the Battle of the Bulge, and his uncle James had volunteered for the draft during the Korean War and enlisted in 1954.
“Then Doug went to Vietnam,” said Cyndi. “So those five kids served over the span of three wars.” Enlisting in 1966, Doug became a medic in the Army and joined the 8th Infantry Division. After jungle combat training at Cu Chi Army Airfield, Doug was ordered to Bien Hoa Air Base RVN (Republic of Vietnam) in January 1968. “But the North Vietnamese had started the Tet Offensive, bringing intense fighting around Cu Chi, so they pushed me to where they desperately needed medics,” he recalled. For the following 365 days, Doug worked as a combat medic evacuation sergeant in heavy fighting at locations between Saigon and Tay Ninh City, earning a Silver Star and a Purple Heart. When he returned to the United States, he joined the Army Reserve as part of the 388th MEDSOM (Medical Supply Optical and Maintenance) Battalion in Hays, Kansas, where he stayed until he retired in 1995.
Raised in the tiny town of Catherine, Kansas, Bryan’s maternal grandparents had raised Bryan’s mother in a family of six children, three boys and three girls, before moving the family to Hays, where Bryan’s grandfather worked at the local farm cooperative for $1.50 per hour. “Hard to believe the hardships they went through raising us,” Cyndi said. When she brought Bryan home from the hospital after his birth, Bryan’s grandfather held him and exclaimed that he would be her tallest. “His grandfather was right!” she said. “Bryan turned out to be six foot one.”
Bryan was the youngest of Cyndi and Doug’s four children, three brothers and one sister. “When Bryan was little, he dressed up in my old military clothes for Halloween,” his father remembered. Like Patrick Hamburger, as Bryan grew, so did his interest in the military, thanks to stories told by Doug’s sister and brothers as well as his father’s influence. Doug built and flew radio-controlled aircraft, and Bryan proved gifted at building and flying them, too. “These things aren’t easy to fly. It’s all eye-hand coordination. The average person can’t just pick it up instantly,” Doug pointed out.
In 1996, while a junior at Hays High School, Bryan followed in his father’s footsteps by enlisting in the U.S. Army Reserve, attending basic training in May 1997 at the age of 17. Then he joined his father’s last unit, the 388th MEDSOM, still based in Hays but by then called MEDLOG (Medical Logistics battalion). Bryan deployed with the 388th twice to the Middle East in the early 2000s. Similar to the Army and Air National Guard in that they are designed to augment active duty, Reserve units belong exclusively to the federal government, receive no state funding, and do not interact directly with state governments. While some Reserve units work with National Guard units at home under their command, virtually all Reserve units deploy in support of overseas efforts.
Bryan first deployed in September 2004 on a six-month tour to Kosovo. There he met Mary, an administrative sergeant, part of a six-person team mobilized from the 139th Medical Group out of Independence, Missouri. “It was love at first sight,” Mary recalled. The two became inseparable. Their command allowed the couple to take some time off work during their deployment, and they traveled through parts of Europe. Meanwhile, Bryan’s lifelong interest in aviation burgeoned into a focused professional pursuit, stirred by Mary’s encouragement: “While in Kosovo, I’d made friends with some of the Chinook pilots stationed there,” she explained. Knowing Bryan’s lifelong love of aviation, she asked a pilot to take Bryan and her on a flight. “Bryan was hooked from the minute he got on the aircraft.” At her request, a senior pilot in the Chinook unit based in Kosovo helped Bryan complete his packet to apply to Fort Rucker’s flight school and wrote him a letter of recommendation. On Thanksgiving Day 2005, Bryan proposed to Mary. “Of course I said yes.”
Accepted to Fort Rucker, Bryan began the first stage of his military flying career just one month later, attending the Warrant Officer Candidate School. All services in the U.S. military require pilots to be commissioned officers, with one exception. “You’ll sometimes hear the term ‘high school to flight school’ with regard to Army aviation flight warrant officers,” said HAATS instructor CW4 Darren Freyer. Prospective commissioned officers must have four-year university degrees, but those accepted to Fort Rucker need only a high school diploma to become an Army flight warrant officer. Many who do have college degrees, including Freyer, enroll in the flight warrant officer program regardless, as that career path brings them more cockpit time than commissioned officer aviators get. These experienced warrant officer pilots, including CW4 Dave Carter as well as Bryan, form the backbone of Army aviation: in most units, they outnumber commissioned officer pilots by a ratio of six to one. Six weeks later, Mary (then a staff sergeant) traveled to Rucker for Bryan’s graduation and pinned his first warrant officer rank on his uniform: warrant officer one, or WO1, a noncommissioned rank. (The next ranks, chief warrant officer CW2 through CW5, are technically commissioned.)
Bryan and Mary wed in October 2006, just as Mary completed her military contract, allowing her to move with Bryan to Fort Rucker. There she helped him with his studies in the first phase of the curriculum. After classroom time, Bryan progressed to flying the Bell TH-67 trainer, then to the Chinook.
Bryan and Mary Nichols under the Statue of Liberty, 2005. Credit 15
“To become an Army pilot, you need to complete a series of stages,” explained Buddy. These include aeromedical training, classroom work in which students learn about the physiological effects of altitude, including the four types of hypoxia, a state of oxygen deficiency in the body. Attendees also learn about the function of the eye, including its role in spatial disorientation, and how flying affects hearing. “The aeromedical section basically explains how flying will affect your body and your mind,” Buddy said.
Once through aeromedical, students learn one of the most important skills for a military helicopter pilot: “They teach you how to get out of a cockpit [when you are] strapped in with all your gear on,” Buddy said. Instructors test students by requiring them to escape a cockpit in what most consider the very worst possible situation. “It’s called the helo-dunker,” said Freyer. “They strap you into a cockpit and dump you in a pool—upside down.” Submerging students six times, instructors pay close attention to see if students follow Rucker’s very specific method of escape, in which the students must locate the nearest emergency window release. The repeated dunks serve to ingrain the escape sequence into the students. “And if you don’t make it through this stage, they send you home,” Buddy added.
Bryan, however, passed with no problems. The next stage, i
nitial entry rotary wing training, consists of “primary” (sometimes called “contact” phase) and “secondary” (also called “instruments”), during which students learn to fly helicopters using instrument gauges. “The first day of primary, you do your ‘nickel flight,’ ” Buddy said. Climbing into a TH-67, Bryan only watched and listened as his instructor took him for a demonstration and familiarization flight. “Once you’re back on the ground, the Rucker tradition is to give your instructor pilot a nickel minted in the year of your birth,” Buddy said. “Not sure how that originated, but maybe it came about because a nickel was the cost of a carnival ride.”
Bryan quickly mastered basic pilot skills during the weeks of his primary phase. After learning to lift into the sky, fly basic maneuvers, and return to earth, he learned how to hover, autorotate, manage engine failures, and respond to a number of other emergencies. Secondary, the instrument phase, requires more time due to the complexity of the regimens required to fly with gauges only. After some time, however, instrument flying became second nature to Bryan, according to his flight training records. Next came basic navigation, in which the instructor flew while Bryan used a tactical map, like those used by ground troops, to plot a point-to-point flight plan, telling the instructor when to turn and to what heading, all during low-level flight directly over trees, rivers, and lakes. Finally, Bryan entered the stage for which he had been yearning: Flight School XXII, when he began flying the Chinook.
“Flight School XXII is where you learn to fly your chosen aircraft, and then learn to fly it tactically, in combat situations,” Buddy said. Bryan started in a simulator, then flew during the day, and then flew at night on NVGs. He also learned about different types of loads, including passengers, internal cargo, and external cargo. “He loved that part of Rucker,” Mary said. Bryan also completed SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, and escape) school, learning a series of tactics and procedures, including techniques to live off the land and evade capture, he’d need should his Chinook go down due to enemy fire or a system malfunction.
