The Aviators

by W. E. B Griffin

  He found a headset and plugged it in, and listened as Bellmon and Oliver went through the takeoff checklist. He found that interesting, not just in itself, nor because the pilot went through the list very carefully, but because General Bellmon himself had chosen to sir in the right, pilot's, seat.

  Oliver's voice came over the earphones.

  "Hanchey. . . where the hell is the radio plate? Hanchey, this is Army HU-IB Helicopter, radio call unknown, Code Eight, in front of Operations."

  "Go ahead, Code Eight."

  "Six One Seven," General Bellmon's voice came metallically over the intercom. "The call-sign plate fell off. The glue came off. This is Army Six One Seven."

  "Six One Seven for liftoff from present position," Oliver said. "VFR, Local." That referred to the Visual Flight Rules.

  "Hanchey clears six one seven for takeoff. The time is ten past the hour. There is no traffic in the area. The winds are five from the north, gusting to fifteen. The altimeter is two nine eight niner."

  "Six One Seven, light on the skids," Oliver said.

  "Hanchey, have you got a location on the Chinook crash?" General Bellmon's voice came over the intercom.

  The Huey was by then four or five feet off the ground, moving away from the Hanchey hangers and parking ramps, north, into the wind, accelerating rapidly.

  "All I have, Sir, is north of Enterprise," the Hanchey tower replied.

  "OK," Bellmon's voice said, and then, "Johnny, call Cairns and see what they have." There was a popping in the earphones as Oliver changed radio frequencies.

  "Cairns, Army Six One Seven."

  "One Seven, Cairns."

  "Can you give me a position for the Chinook crash?" Oliver asked. At the same moment, General Bellmon decided he had sufficient horizontal velocity and needed next a little altitude.

  Jose Newell had to grab the aluminum pole through which the nylon straps of his seat were woven as Bellmon put the Huey in a steep climbing turn to the west.

  He really can fly this thing, Newell thought, and then wondered why that surprised him.

  "Army Six One Seven, Cairns. A crash emergency has been declared. No aircraft will fly into or over the ten-square mile area north of U. S. Highway 84 and west of Alabama Highway 27. Those are the roads leading west and north from Enterprise. Six One Seven, acknowledge."

  "This is General Bellmon," Newell heard Johnny Oliver say. "Where's the crash?"

  "Sir, are you aboard Six One Seven?" Cairns asked.

  "Yes, I am," Oliver said.

  "Sir, the Chinook went in about five miles north-northwest of Enterprise."

  "Are you in contact with Colonel McNair?" Bellmon's voice came over the earphones.

  "Colonel McNair is at the crash site, Sir."

  "OK," Bellmon said. "Six One Seven is going to the crash site. ETA five minutes."

  "Yes, Sir," Cairns said.

  Three minutes later, Second Lieutenant Joseph M. Newell heard Major General Bellmon said, "Oh, shit, there it is.

  Goddamn!" Newell stuck his head out the door of the Huey. Eight hundred feet ahead of and below them, in a stand of very young pine trees, was the oblong, squarish fuselage of the crashed Chinook.

  The U. S. Army CH -47 -Series helicopters were manufactured by Boeing-Vertol, successor company to Piasecki Helicopters, which had designed and manufactured the CH-21 "Flying Banana." Like the CH-21, the Chinook used two equal-sized rotary wings, rather than, as in Sikorsky and Bell helicopters, one large rotary-wing and a smaller antitorque tail rotor. Powered by two 2650-shaft horsepower turbine engines, either of which could power both sixty-foot-diameter rotors in an emergency, the Chinook had a maximum gross takeoff weight of about fourteen tons, with a payload of about seven tons. The engines were mounted outside on each side of the rear rotor pylon, so that the fuselage, wide enough for a jeep or light artillery piece, was unobstructed. There was a ramp at the rear to facilitate loading.

  The triple-bladed front rotor of the crashed Chinook was collapsed over the cockpit; the rear rotor was nowhere in sight. The left engine had been ripped from the rear pylon by the force of the crash. And the right engine had also been ripped loose, but was still connected by wire and cables to the pylon.

  The stand of pine trees, all the same size, looked to Jose Newell to be about a quarter of a section of land. It was a tree farm. There was no sign of trees having been tom down or uprooted, except in the immediate vicinity of the crashed Chinook. That meant that the Chinook had fallen to the ground like a rock, Newell thought (and found the thought very uncomfortable). It had come down with little or no horizontal motion.

  The crash itself was almost in the center of the tree farm. At the far side was an open field where four helicopters were sitting:

  three Hueys, two of them with Red Cross Aerial Ambulance markings, and a Hughes OH-6, a small, high-performance helicopter Newell had seen before only in pictures.

  The field was half a mile from a dirt road, and Newell could see cars, trucks, police cars, and fire engines waiting there. They were apparently unable to get through a fence to cross the field.

  Bellmon dropped the Huey close to the ground and flew over the Chinook low enough for Jose Newell to notice something he had missed when he had first caught sight of the downed helicopter: the fuselage was no longer straight; its forward and aft sections had been bent downward by the force of impact. The plexiglass windows on the roof of the cockpit were broken, and he saw people in the pilot's and copilot's seats inside. For an instant he wondered why they hadn't gotten out. And then he understood why: they were dead.

  Without thinking about it, he crossed himself.

  They reached the end of the stand of pines, and Bellmon prepared to land the Huey. A man wearing an International Distress Orange flight jacket came running out and tried to wave them off. Bellmon ignored him. With a just perceptible bump, the Huey sat down.

  {FIVE]

  5.3 Miles NNW of Enterprise, Alabama

  0920 Hours 12 January 1964

  The man in the International Distress Orange flight jacket who tried unsuccessfully to wave off General Bellmon's helicopter turned out to be an Army Aviation Board major.

  He ran angrily to the Huey as it settled onto the field, but then recognized Bellmon.

  When Bellmon climbed out, the Major saluted.

  "I'm Major Crane, Sir," he said. "I didn't know it was you, General."

  "No way you could. What happened?"

  "The pilot declared an emergency, Sir," Major Crane reported. "He said he was experiencing severe vibration. Then he said he'd lost the rear rotor. Then he said he was going in. "

  "You heard him?" Bellmon asked.

  "Yes, Sir. Colonel McNair and I were in the, area, in the Hughes. We had spoken with them a minute or two before."

  "Where is Colonel McNair?"

  "At the Chinook, Sir. We were the first ones to get here.

  Cairns had them on radar and gave us a vector here. He sent me back here, Sir, to wait for the photographers." Bellmon nodded and then walked briskly toward the treeline, with Oliver and Newell trailing behind him.

  When he saw Bellmon and the others coming through the trees, Colonel John W. McNair, the President of the U.S. Army Aviation Board, also wearing an International Distress Orange flight jacket, was leaning against one of the young pines, fifty feet from the downed Chinook.

  The Aviation Board, which was stationed on Fort Rucker, but was not subordinate to the Army Aviation Center, was charged with testing aircraft and associated equipment to reveal design discrepancies and to determine the levels of maintenance and spare parts which would be required to operate the aircraft, and its support equipment, in tactical use.

  He straightened up and waited for them. He touched his hand to his forehead in a casual salute.

  "Hello, Mac," Bellmon said, returning the salute. "Bad business, this."

  "I'm surprised to see you here, General," McNair said.

  "Why does that surprise you, Mac?" Bellmon repl
ied icily.

  "I meant so soon, Sir," McNair replied uncomfortably.

  "Hell, the medics just got here."

  "Any idea what happened?"

  "The tail rotor came off," McNair said, gesturing vaguely in the direction of the Chinook's rear pylon. "They came down like a stone. They were at twenty-five-hundred feet."

  "Jesus! " Bellmon said.

  He walked to the Chinook. Oliver followed him, and when he got closer took his Minox from his trousers pocket and started shooting pictures.

  Colonel McNair saw him and trotted after him.

  "What are you doing?" McNair demanded.

  Bellmon stopped and turned.

  "He's taking pictures, Mac," Bellmon said. "Since I don't see any official photographers around, that strikes me as a pretty good idea."

  "The photographers are on the way," McNair said, and then, "CONARC will have to clear those pictures before they're released, Sir."

  "What the hell is the matter with you, Mac?" Bellmon flared. "You didn't really suppose that Oliver was going to pass those pictures out to the press, did you?"

  "No, Sir, of course not," McNair said. "I'm a little shaken, General" Bellmon snorted and walked close to the Chinook.

  At first glance, the copilot appeared to be bent over the control panel as though searching for something. But what that meant, Bellmon knew, was that he himself wasn't looking closely enough. He steeled himself, took a good long look, forced the nausea and the feeling of faintness down, and backed away. He turned around.

  "You can knock off the picture taking, Johnny," he said.

  "Here come the photographers." Oliver took the Minox from his eye and looked where Bellmon was pointing. Three soldiers and an officer, all laden down with cameras and photographic equipment, were trotting-panting with the exertion-through the young pines.

  "I think you had better give that film to Colonel McNair's people, Johnny," Bellmon said. "After you've had them make me a set of prints. "

  "Yes, Sir," Oliver said.

  One of the photographers set his camera case on the ground, then started to trot toward the crashed fuselage.

  "Hold it right there, son," Bellmon called, and then turned to Colonel McNair. "Mac, how do we know this thing isn't going to blow up?"

  "The fuel tanks didn't rupture, Sir," McNair said. "And we've put three extinguisher loads into the engines and the panels."

  "OK, son," Bellmon said, gesturing to the photographer.

  "Be thorough, but make it quick. Get the cockpit first." He turned again and walked around the Chinook. When he got to the back, he saw that the force of impact had. caused the rear ramp door to open. When he looked inside, he saw that the pylon supports had buckled, apparently when the engines had torn loose. Then he saw the crew chief. He was lying on the fuselage floor, facedown, arms and legs spread, in a darkening, half-inch-deep puddle of blood. He stared a moment and then completed his trip around the fuselage. Behind him he heard the sound of retching. He wondered if it was Oliver, or Oliver's second-lieutenant friend. But it would not have been right to turn around and look. He forced himself, instead, to set up in his mind the actions that would be required of him next, and the best way to accomplish them.

  He went to Colonel McNair.

  "The tanks didn't rupture," Bellmon said. "That's something, I suppose." Colonel John W. McNair had of course informed General Bellmon not three minutes before that the tanks had not ruptured. Nevertheless, if he took offense at Bellmon checking this out for himself, the only sign was a tightening of his lips.

  "Yes, Sir, it is. As hard as they must have hit, you would have thought the tanks would have ruptured."

  "Aside from the loss of the crew, the Air Force is going to love this," Bellmon said."

  "If the Air Force, which has the necessary experience, and expertise, were conducting the testing, this tragedy could have been avoided," Bellmon quoted. "If I can hear my brother-in-law saying that, you can imagine what the other bastards are going to say."

  "Yes, Sir, I'm afraid that's just what's going to be said."

  "And O. K. Wendall tells me-and I believe-that without the Chinook, the 11th Air Assault can't hack it."

  "I agree with General Wendall, Sir," Colonel McNair said.

  "And if the 11th Air Assault can't hack it, there goes the whole ball game," Bellmon said. "The Army will be back where it was before, begging the Air Force for close-in air support. "

  "I wouldn't go quite that far, Sir," Colonel McNair said.

  "I believe that Army Aviation is an idea whose time has come." Bellmon grunted but didn't reply.

  "What has to be done, Mac," he said, closing the subject, "is to find out what went wrong here and fix it right now.

  And if that sounds like I'm telling you what to do, I'm sorry."

  "I agree completely, Sir."

  "How do you plan to handle the next of kin?" Bellmon asked.

  "Sir, I don't understand the question."

  "This is a suggestion, Mac, just that. But if it would help you to get things moving. . ."

  "011," Colonel McNair said, and paused thoughtfully.

  "Yes, Sir, that would help. If you would tell them that I'm here, trying to find out what happened, and that I'll come just as soon as I can. . . that would be a big help, Sir. I appreciate it."

  "OK," Bellmon said. "You need anything else from the Post, Mac, just speak up."

  "Yes, Sir, thank you, Sir."

  "Let's go, Johnny, we've done all we can do here," BeItmon said.

  VII

  {ONE] Quarters #36

  The U. S. Army Infantry Center

  Fort Benning, Georgia

  1015 Hours 12 January 1964

  Susan Rand, barefoot, came down the stairs two at a time, ran into the living room, and grabbed the telephone. She was wearing a cotton blouse, mostly unbuttoned, and a pair of faded slacks. And nothing else. She had been in the shower.

  The quarters assigned to General Rand were identical to, and four doors down from, the quarters he had been assigned during his last tour at Fort Benning. These were commonly referred to as Colonels' Quarters-two-story brick structures that had been constructed in the late 1930s to house captains.

  Downstairs were the living room, the dining room, the study, the kitchen, and a toilet. There was a sun porch to the right and a small, screened-in porch at the back. Upstairs

  were three bedrooms, a smaller room known as the sewing room, and the bathroom. And above that was an attic. Some attics, though not the one in Quarters #36, had been finished, providing a little additional space under the eaves.

  The last time a captain had occupied one of the houses on "Colonels' Row" had been in the very early days of War II. Rank hath its privileges, and captains and majors and lieutenant colonels had been moved elsewhere to accommodate colonels and generals. The post-War II Army had not shrunk to pre-war levels, so the quarters had continued to house colonels. Then Korea had come along, and now Vietnam was heating up. There were not sufficient quarters to house all the general officers assigned to Benning in generals' quarters, so Rand's promotion had not brought with it larger quarters than the ones he'd lived in the last time he was there.