A recent news telecast depicted a helicopter crash near a beach in Florida. Quite a dramatic vision. The crash itself is sad and not something I bring up without sympathy for loss. However, the incident brings to mind experiences concerning helicopters that I wish to share. Papa is no engineer but the ability of airplanes to fly made sense mainly because they have wings. Conversely, I acquired a belief that it was hard for helicopters to actually fly. No wings.
However, fly they do. I was never comfortable riding in one. Part of the reason for my failure to embrace flight in a giant egg beater stems from a portion of my work in Vietnam. Some of my work involved reviewing various investigations. The military does a ton of investigations; including aircraft accidents. I’d review with an eye towards how thorough a job had been done and if there were any unanswered questions etc. One item regarding helicopters stuck in my mind. I’d receive a readout about the number of aircraft lost. In combat or from accidents. The actual numbers are no longer retained in my vice-like brain but what was especially significant to me at the time was that helicopters lost to accident versus to combat was at least 2 1/2 times greater. Perhaps those Cong guys were bad shots but I doubt if that created the ratio gap.
On the few occasions when I had to fly away from the safety of our base, I was often fortunate to be able to pick and choose my routing. I had some flexibility about date and times. I remember going to aviation offices and looking for pilots of upcoming trips with photos of family on the desk. In a few of my investigative reviews I’d read about what is best described as an element of risk taking by pilots. Helicopters can auto-rotate to safe landings at times. I remember one where the pilot rotated down with the airfield in sight and he was teased for doing so. Then, of course, there was another that experienced similar engine problems but crashed trying to get to base to avoid being teased. I can recall a few other “accidents” caused by sheer stupidity.
Once, near or at the border with Cambodia in the Delta region I had no choice of pilots. Off we were to go from a landing zone surrounded on three sides by tall (really tall) trees. The crew’s radio chatter seemed excited about whether the pilot would try to clear the tall (very, very tall to my eyes) trees on the flight out. A perfectly cleared fourth direction of course was not used. Everyone was excited to see if the helicopter would make it except Papa. I saw the tip top of those damn trees as amounting to a non-combat loss to pad the statistical imbalance.