IN PRAISE OF HELICOPTER PILOTS

 

The deaths of 64 people in this month’s midair collision at Reagan National Airport has focused often unpleasant attention on the Army helicopter crew that collided with an airliner.

At this early date, it’s understandable that we have far more questions than legitimate answers.  However, most of the informed commentary—and President Trump’s lengthy statement—indicate at least some culpability with the Black Hawk crew.

How experienced were the two pilots?  

Media accounts describe the army aviators as “fairly experienced” or “reasonably experienced.”

Reportedly the senior pilot had 1,000 flight hours; the junior pilot only 500. For context, my friend Sergei Sikorsky (of whom you will read more next month) knows of Indian Army helicopter pilots with more than 1,000 hours above 10,000 feet, flying rescue missions.

That’s the trouble with generalist reporters—they have little to zero frame of reference for such things.

“Nobody should try writing about aviation unless they’ve been in aviation.”

I wrote those words in a previous century.  They remain valid in the current century.

So, in honor of “rotor heads” everywhere, I offer these examples among my friends and sources.

Haiphong Harbor, 1967

Then-Navy Lieutenant Steve Millikin, a journalism major from the University of Oregon, flew rescue missions in the Tonkin Gulf.  On April 26, Steve’s SH-3 crew was dispatched to the scene of a USS Ticonderoga  A-4 Skyhawk shootdown.  The pilot ejected and was afloat in his Mae west at the entrance to Haiphong Harbor.

Unknown to Steve’s crew, minutes earlier another “Tico” Skyhawk had been downed by a surface to air missile inland from Haiphong.  The pilot received a posthumous Medal of Honor, an event described by my late-great friend and coauthor Commander John B. Nichols in the USNI Proceedings article “On Your Wing.”

Steve motored into range of shore guns, making all of 130 knots and came to a hover over Lieutenant (JG) J. W. Caine.  While the helo’s crew chief returned fire with his machine gun, the copilot unlimbered his Thompson and hosed off optimistic rounds toward shore.

With Cain in the rescue collar, the crew chief hoisted the aviator toward the cabin while Steve added power and got the hell out of there.

Shortly thereafter Steve’s family in California saw him receive a well deserved Silver Star on the CBS Evening News.

Steve retired as a captain after 28 years, becoming editor of the Tailhook Association quarterly journal, and finally retired in 2006.  He died with an Agent Orange diagnosis in 2016, a fine gentleman widely admired.

Quang Tin Province, 1968

Major Patrick Brady began his second Vietnam tour in 1967, an inspirational example to the young warrant officers who often arrived in country with barely 200 flight hours. Because of his extensive background, the 31-year-old South Dakota pilot often he took his unit’s night navigation and instrument flight missions until the newbies built more experience.

On January 6, early in the Communist Tet Offensive, Brady began flying before dawn, penetrating clouds and darkness on the first of repeated medical evacuation missions.  Finding the designated South Vietnamese unit, Brady flew uphill sideways to judge his Huey’s rotor clearance to the trees.  It was an incredible feat of flying.

On the next mission Brady ignored the fact that two choppers had been shot down near the landing zone.  He made four flights into that hellish place, rescuing casualties each time. 

In seven sorties Pat Brady used three Hueys to evacuate 52 infantrymen.  When I interviewed him, he regretted that he did not have time to record the crew names on those flights.

He received the Medal of Honor plus 62 other combat decorations and retired as a major general with 34 years of service.  He continued his exceptional ways, receiving an MBA from Notre Dame.

Pat Brady wrote, “We are not born equal in terms of ability or opportunity.  There is only one way we can compete  equally in life: courage!”

Hue, South Vietnam, 1968

On January 31, 1968, three weeks after Brady’s actions, Chief Warrant Officer Fred Ferguson was a 28-year-old Arizonan with prior Navy service.  Ferguson’s unit, operating under the 1st Cavalry Division, intended to rescue a battalion and company commander whose helicopter had been shot down in the beleaguered city of Hue, mostly surrounded by North Vietnamese forces.

Five Hueys had been driven off by intense ground fire, and others were waved off by the regional military command.

Undaunted, Ferguson and his platoon commander, Lieutenant W.H. Anderson, conducted a radio briefing with three escorting gunships.  Their CO advised against trying to reach him, but left the decision to the Huey pilots.  As the more experienced flier, Ferguson was in charge.

Observing the chaotic situation, Ferguson flew up the Perfume River where enemy gunners fired down on his Huey, hitting it repeatedly.  He plunked into a precision landing inside the walled compound where Vietnamese soldiers tossed casualties aboard.  Then Ferguson added power, pulled pitch, and lifted out of the confined space.  

Seconds later mortar shells exploded where he had landed.  His chopper absorbed more damage on the way out.  Its next flight was slung beneath a big Chinook.

Months later Ferguson was told that his CO wanted to speak with him. “My first thought was, ‘What have I done now?’”  He was going to receive the Medal of Honor, presented by President Richard Nixon in May 1969.

Subsequently Fred forfeited his major’s oak leaves for warrant officer bars so he could continue military flying.  

He retired as a helicopter instructor in 1997, then joined the Arizona Department of Veterans Services.

Of his Medal mission, he says, “We worked together to do our job.  We were lucky and were just glad to be around at the end of the day.”

Planet Earth, 20th century

I’ll call him “Mack.”  He’s from an old Oregon farming family whose property nearly adjoined my father’s acreage.  

Mack got the flying bug early and went Army in a big way, leading to 22,000 innovative flight hours.  He might be the only pilot I know who’s been shot at on three or four continents.  Mack flew Hueys in Vietnam (“So high that I was just a speck up there above the gunfire”), and transitioned to CH-47 Chinooks in the National Guard where his depth of experience and irrepressible personality overcame officialdom.

Subsequently Mack lateraled to one or two U.S. Government agencies—I’ve never asked too closely— flying diplomatic and/or deniable missions in South and Central America plus Afghanistan. Officially Afghanistan is in Southwest Asia while Vietnam is Southeast Asia—and that might run Mack’s total to four after all.

DAVID V. GOLIATH POST MORTEM

 

The Valley of Elah, c. 1012 B.C.  

 

In a deceptively pastoral setting about twenty miles west-southwest of present-day Jerusalem, two opposing armies squared off.  King Saul’s Israelites faced an imposing force of Philistines.  

 

Israelites and Philistines were historic enemies owing to territorial and philosophical disputes. 

 

The Philistine army included giant warriors from the Gaza region.  The most prominent was called Goliath, minimally reckoned at more than seven feet—an immensely frightening figure, huge for the era.  Scripture says that Goliath stalked forward morning and evening for forty days, berating the Israelites for their reluctance to send forth a champion in single combat.

"Why do you come out and line up for battle?  Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 

 

Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.”

 

As the Book of Samuel added, “On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.”  They recognized that Goliath had been “a man of war since his youth.”

 

At the end of the forty days a youthful shepherd named David overheard the challenge while delivering supplies to his older brothers.  The Book of Numbers specifies that Israeli men entered the army at age twenty, so David likely was between sixteen and nineteen.

 

When no Israelite soldiers offered to serve as Saul’s champion, David presented himself.  In 1 Samuel 17:36 he said to the king, "Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God." 

 

The passage makes two references to lack of circumcision, by inference denigrating the Philistine practice.  Subsequently, to earn Saul’s daughter in marriage, David and his merry band delivered 200 Philistine foreskins as a down payment.

 

Lacking options, the king and court wanted to fit the shepherd with helmet and armor, but David declined.  In modern parlance he would have said, “I’ve got this.”

 

David’s offer was reluctantly accepted, and he calmly walked forth, armed with his shepherd’s sling, seeking five suitable stones.  

 

So…how big were David and Goliath?

 

Archaeologists have long determined that early Bronze Age males typically stood five feet, five inches.  So that’s a reasonable assumption for David.

 

As for Goliath, we default to the oft-cited Biblical measure.  The Samuel author pegs him at six cubits and a span.  Typically, a cubit was measured from the elbow to tip of the middle finger although sometimes it stopped at the wrist or the palm. Egyptian measures seem fairly consistent at 20 to 21 inches.  Greek and Roman sources indicate an 18-inch cubit.  Jewish sources range from 17.5 to 21.5 inches.  

 

A span usually measured the width of the fingers or palm, just about 3 inches.

 

Therefore, Goliath’s height seems between exactly 9 feet and about 10 feet 9 inches.

 

Current medical data shows that seven-foot-tall men weigh 225 to 275 pounds, mostly being skinny.  However, basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal is 7 feet 1 inch and 325 pounds but has said he peaked at 415 playing weight.  At 325 that’s 46 pounds per foot, but 415 equals 60 pounds per foot.  So at an intermediate 9 feet 10 inches, Goliath’s median weight was about 450 pounds but he could have been well over 500.  

 

Goliath usually was accompanied by a shield bearer while carrying his own weapons: a large sword and a honking big spear with a head weighing fifteen pounds.  It would have been deadly as a thrusting or projectile weapon.

 

Nowthen: what about the sling?

 

A sling was not a slingshot with elastic tension, which dated from the 19th century.  

 

Slings were common weapons in the ancient world, and slingers often were fielded in groups to provide volley “fire” at extended distances.  A sling might measure 35 to 40 inches of braided cord with a cloth or leather cup or “pocket” in the middle.  The projectile—a rock—fit in the cup, held there by inertia when the slinger twirled the weapon.  

 

Some slings had a finger loop for the strong hand; others tied the end to the wrist but in either case the shooter held the loose end in the same hand.  Slinging was something like playing the violin—everyone knows the basics but develops his own technique.  

 

Experts could generate useful velocity with a few spins, then let fly.  Some slingers are faster off the mark than others, using only one spin while others use three or four.  

 

Spinning the sling overhead, or with an arm extended to the side, or “pitching” overhand from behind all seem to work equally well.  

 

Internet videos demonstrate some astonishing accuracy with slings against precision targets, near to far.  

 

At which point things became extremely difficult.

 

Contrary to slingshots, slings had no reference for aiming.  The slinger needed exceptional hand-eye coordination based on extensive experience to judge weight, distance, and velocity.  As a shepherd, David was highly competent in striking predators around his sheep.  The distances would have varied considerably—how far was it from one side of the flock to the other where a bear or lion appeared?  Scripture tells us that David was an accomplished slinger, able to place a rock on the predator with enough velocity to send it scampering off.

 

Saul granted David permission to fight, and the shepherd departed with his staff and sling.  He stopped at the nearby stream and selected five smooth stones, which he placed in his pouch.  They would have been of a size and weight for ballistic consistency.   Depending on specifics, likely the stones would attain between 160 and 250 feet per second.

 

When David confronted Goliath, they exchanged comments, which says something about the distance between them.  Even allowing for a giant’s booming voice, he had to hear the responses of the boy before him.

 

Then there’s the language thing, and the Bible ignores the subject.  Almost nothing is known about the Philistine tongue, other than it was part of the Canaanite family. On the other hand, David likely spoke early Hebrew and possibly Aramaic.  

         

Since the combatants had no mutually intelligible language, we have to wonder about veracity of the Samuel passage.  Which, according to scholars, likely was written in about the seventh century BC.  

 

In any case, the distance could have varied between fifteen and twenty paces—maybe forty feet. 

 

David’s target was small: the exposed area between the giant’s eyebrows up to the base of his bronze helmet.  Allowing for Goliath’s size, call it four inches.

 

Supremely confident, David swirled the sling and let fly.  

 

David’s first shot was decisive.  He did not need to strike a fatal blow, but the impact velocity of that stone knocked the Philistine champion to the ground, apparently senseless.  Thus incapacitated, he could not prevent the shepherd from drawing his large sword and decapitating the giant.  If Goliath stood 9-feet-10, and we extrapolate 450 and 580 pounds, when David raised the grisly trophy it might have weighed 40 to 45 pounds. 

 

Then the Jews drove the enemy back to Gath.

 

And eventually David inherited a kingdom.

REMEMBERING LEYTE GULF: A SECOND TIME

This month's offering reprises my original Leyte Gulf blog entry from October 2019.  I have left the 75th anniversary text intact but I want to acknowledge the 80th anniversary this month.

A quick sidebar: 

In the course of researching and writing Pacific Theater topics since the 1970s, I was fortunate to know a variety of Leyte Gulf veterans.  They included survivors of the escort carrier Gambier Bay (CVE-60), who invited me to accompany them on a 1977 Philippines reunion cruise.  That was a unique opportunity, intended as basis for a book but which produced one of my favorite articles, cited here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gambier_Bay

The Gambier Bay crew included retired Captain Ed Huxtable, skipper of the ship's composite squadron, an inspiring leader and fellow Arizonan.  

Other Leyte Gulf veterans were Captain David McCampbell, the Navy's leading fighter ace who wrote the foreword for my 1979 F6F Hellcat book. And later Texas Governor John Connolly, the USS Essex (CV-9) fighter director who gave Dave and his wingman "the vector of vectors" to the all-time record interception of Japanese aircraft.

So let's set back the clock--and the calendar--to the October 2019 blog:

==

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the greatest naval battle of World War II.  From October 23 to 26, 1944, the U.S. and Imperial Japanese navies clashed in Philippine waters.  The context was General Douglas MacArthur’s promised Return to the islands when he had fled the unstoppable Japanese in early 1942.  Subsequently the Joint Chiefs in Washington decided to merge the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific offensives in the Philippines rather than Formosa (now Taiwan), thus setting huge forces in motion.

Oddly enough, the Battle of Leyte Gulf had little to do with Leyte Gulf, but it was the dominant feature of the campaign.  The scale could only be imagined today: 236 American and about 80 Japanese warships plus U.S. torpedo boats and submarines while both fleets deployed significant support vessels such as tankers and provision ships.  The Americans brought about 1,500 tailhook aircraft aboard 34 fleet and escort carriers while the Japanese Navy had approximately 300 planes in four carriers and ashore.

The U.S. Third Fleet was led by Admiral William F. Halsey, the jut-jawed seadog who had been at war against Japan since December 7, 1941.  His carrier commander in Task Force 38 was Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, a pioneer aviator who relied heavily upon his excellent staff.  The amphibious force was led by Seventh Fleet’s Admiral Thomas Kinkaid.

Leyte Gulf has been told and retold dozens of times, and requires little expansion here.  The Imperial Navy deployed three units: two powerful surface forces transiting the islands from west to east, and a minimal carrier force well to the north, which was bound to draw attention of the aggressive “Bull” Halsey.

Leading four Japanese carriers was Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, who had clashed with Mitscher off the Marianas in June.  “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” all but destroyed Tokyo’s carefully hoarded supply of trained carrier aircrews, leaving Ozawa with a small crop of rookies.

Historians still argue whether Leyte Gulf was a carrier battle.  The previous five, dating from Coral Sea in May 1942, all involved mutual exchange of carrier air strikes.  They resulted in loss of three U.S. flattops (plus one to a submarine) and nine Japanese—totaling fewer than the fast carriers Mitscher owned in October 44.  While a few of Ozawa’s planes flew within range of TF-38, none accomplished anything significant.

The battle began with U.S. submarines stalking Japan’s surface forces west of the Philippines on the 23rd.  Events peaked the next day with continuous air strikes that sank the battleship Musashi—one of the two biggest ships afloat—but otherwise did little to deter Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, who continued toward his goal of attacking U.S. shipping in Leyte Gulf.  His passage through San Bernardino Strait was reported by U.S. night owls but was ignored by Halsey and Mitscher with disastrous results the next day.

Meanwhile, Japanese land-based aircraft sank USS Princeton on the 24th, the first American fast carrier lost since October 1942.

Hours later, Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura’s southern force was annihilated in the last major surface action of all time, a nocturnal slugfest in the Battle of Surigao Strait.  Outnumbered about six to one, he lost his life and his command, only one destroyer surviving.  

Partly due to unnecessarily complex communications, Halsey assumed that his battleships, Task Force 34, were guarding the Leyte side of San Bernardino Strait.  With word of Ozawa’s flattops to the north, he took TF-38 to destroy Ozawa, leaving Kinkaid’s amphibious command vulnerable to surface ships.  The only American force in the way was “Taffy Three,” six small carriers with their escorting destroyers.  During the Battle Off Samar, the immensely outgunned “small boys” fought back with guns, torpedoes, and whatever aircraft could be launched.  Other escort-carrier planes added to the effort, forcing Kurita to disengage.  

Throughout the day the U.S. Navy lost two escort carriers (one to the first kamikaze mission) and three destroyers.  

Halsey’s aviators and “black shoe” surface warriors sank all four of Ozawa’s carriers, but by then his flattops were almost empty shells.  The execution continued into the 26th, raising the toll to 28 Japanese warships.  The Imperial Navy never recovered.

MacArthur’s forces largely secured the Philippines in April 1945, providing another advanced fleet base for the Pacific Fleet.  

Late that year the U.S. Navy owned 6,000 ships including 90 aircraft carriers of all types.  It was two-thirds more than 12 months before and over three times the figure in 1941.  More than 3,000,000 men and women wore navy uniforms.

Today the Navy has about 490 ships and submarines with 438,000 uniformed personnel.  Congress mandates eleven carriers but at this writing only two are deployed. The new USS Ford (CVN-78), an enduring boondoggle, was delivered incomplete and may not deploy for another four or five years.  Her primary aircraft, the F-35C stealth fighter, is perennially troubled, and in fact took over two years just to qualify in carrier landings.  The Lightning II remains in low-rate production until it meets required mileposts for operational capability.

There’s still a great deal of misty-eyed sentimentality about “the greatest generation,” though none of the hundreds of World War II vets I’ve known, met or interviewed bought into Tom Brokaw’s unsupportable assertion.  But one thing seems certain: the aircrews and sailors who fought Leyte Gulf represented the greatest assembly of naval talent and capability of the era.