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WOC
Stories...
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Submitted by: Bill Herbert
In November, 1963 I was part of a group of 17 potential Warrant Officer Candidates who had just graduated from Ft. Knox basic training. I was approaching 22 years of age, and surprisingly, older than most of the group. I was appointed the "group leader" or some such thing for this little movement of a few recruits to primary flight school.
We went to the personnel office as instructed to receive our orders and Government Travel Requisitions, etc. The crusty old Sergeant there handed us orders to Camp Wolters near Dallas. I said something such as "Excuse me, Sergeant, we all have enlistment commitments to FIXED WING flight school ... there is only rotary wing at Camp Wolters."
I remember that he said something such as "What does a bunch of #$%#@$& cruits know ... you'll go where I say!" We did.
The next day, we left Louisville aboard an American Airlines Electra ... a trip I'll never forget! The Captain informed us that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, then in Memphis, an intermediate stop, he informed us that JFK had died. When we arrived in Dallas that evening, the city was like a ghost town.
We boarded the bus to Mineral Wells and arrived there late at night. The next morning, a personnel Sergeant there, almost as crusty as the one at Ft Knox, asked "What the @$%& are you doing here ... you were supposed to be at Ft Rucker a couple days ago!"
I said something such as "That was what I tried to tell that dumb $%@ at Ft Knox!"
The Sergeant at Wolters didn't like that comment!
After a day or so of being treated like pure crap, we boarded a bus and then a plane and finally arrived at Rucker about a week late. We had passed back through Dallas the day that Ruby shot Oswald.
When we finally arrived at Rucker, the personnel people questioned where we had been! I said something such as "Ask that dumb %$& at Ft Knox." And so my four weeks in Preflight Hell began.
Primary
Preflight at Rucker was hell. It was intended to be, of course. Primary wasn't much better, except that while I was there when some Army or Congressional committee decided that since we were flying every day, the Tech Officers/Sgts should let us get a good night's sleep. When that went into effect early in Primary, it was better, but not much.
I've always felt that the pressure on the "red cap" WOC's was much greater than it should have been, when Officers ... the "blue and gold" caps ... were going through the same flight training. Most had degrees, sure, but they didn't face the harassment that WOC's did during the same training.
I remember all of my flight instructors (Page Aviation was the contractor, I think). One very religious guy didn't like my language and especially didn't like the fact that I solo'd on an early check ride after he tried to wash me out. We never got along very well. Later instructors were just fine.
We flew the O-1A (L-19) from day one, as the more forgiving Cessna 172 (T-41) came along several years later. The O-1 was known as a "ground loop" ready to happen, and it got many of us during primary. I only ground looped once, causing no damage except to the pride of the instructor in the back seat who claimed that a brake stuck. One of my roommates, with this same instructor, turned a Birddog over on its back during a wheels landing exercise out at one of the auxiliary fields ... the instructor claimed the brakes locked up, and nobody was hurt. Seems this guy had a real problem with faulty brakes.
I had brought my new 63 Ford down to Alabama during the Christmas break, and after Preflight, I went drag racing at a local track when I could get away for the weekend. The car did well, and there I met a local college gal. The car also give me the opportunity to get away from Rucker on those rare weekends when I didn't have demerits or whatever to prevent it, and I took advantage of that when I could.
I learned, however, that it is not a good idea to date a college girl that had previously been the girlfriend of a Tac Officer ... guess who that 2nd Lt was!
And so it went in primary flight school.
Survival Training
There were many humorous little events during flight school that probably have been embellished a bit over the past almost forty years. I think that the older we get, many of us tend to remember the "good times" during the important periods in our life, and suppress the "not-so-good."
Take "survival training" for example ... three or so days over an unseasonably cold and damp Alabama Spring weekend. A day or so of classroom and demonstrations, then dumped out in the "boondocks" in the evening with the objective to make it to a certain bridge which was "friendly" lines. A local infantry unit played Aggressors and chased us around the woods.
One of my roommates came across an Aggressor staging area, and when a couple of the infantry troops came close to his position, he crawled into the back of a deuce and a half. It was warmer in the truck, so he decided to hunker down for a while.
He dozed off. Later, the truck starts up and departs, with my buddy along for the ride. It ended up at the NCO club, where two sergeants were making a "food run" of sorts. The stowaway WOC decided to "surrender" as he wasn't sure how this unauthorized trip would turn out ... what IF these two weren't going back to the training exercise area? The surprised sergeants bought him a hamburger, fries, and a beverage and returned him to the "boonies" where they released him.
The next morning, he and I and a bunch of others were "rescued" by a UH-1, which then faked "engine problems" and dumped us off in sight of an Aggressor patrol. We never made it to the objective, the bridge, but at least my roommate wasn't as hungry as the rest of us.
Fortunately, this was just a training exercise. We laughed a lot about his unscheduled "chow break" at the NCO club.
The sad part of this memory is that a couple years later, my former roommate and his observer became two "missing in action" statistics when his Birddog failed to return from a mission. No trace was ever found.
Parachutes
Embarrassing moments were quite common during my WOC days at Rucker. One of my least flattering experiences was at Shell Army Airfield, then a fixed wing training base field, not a heliport, as I understand it is today.
I hated wearing those parachutes! Although we each had to check one out during primary, we (our group of three during primary) usually left one in the seat of airplane, which we all wore. It was easier and a common practice. Besides, unless that Birddog was really badly on fire or one of the wings was falling off, I wasn't going to leave it. I'd had the power pulled back so many times with the "select a field, establish a glide" exercise, and we never flew much above 4,000 feet, that I figured I was better off staying with the plane then trying to pop that door and fall out of it.
I had just soled at Skelly, an auxiliary staging field that we used almost daily. On my return to Shell at the end of the day, when exiting the O-1 still wearing the parachute, I caught part of it on the door of the Birddog. Slight tug on my back, and thinking I had just bumped the door, I continued to walk across the ramp a few yards, but with a little more resistance that I didn't understand ... as I said, I hated wearing that heavy parachute. My two roommates, who were part of the same "flight," came running up, I thought to congratulate me for the solo. Instead, they pointed behind me.
Back there for several feet was my parachute, unfolding rather neatly across the tarmac.
A nearby flight instructor made a comment such as "Well, Candidate Herbert, now I'm sure you've done EVERYTHING wrong today!"
Actually, I hadn't, and it was one of the happiest days of my life!
Practice Emergency Landings
We were planning on shooting solo touch and go's at Enterprise, which then was used as an auxiliary training field. The Birddog to which we were assigned had a previous "write-up" concerning an engine running rough under sudden throttle advance. A mechanic had checked it out and found nothing wrong. It was the last O-1 that was available to us and it seemed to run fine, so we took it on a cold, low-ceiling day, barely above the "pattern-only" limits that we sometimes faced. The instructor, who had the nickname of "Tiny," decided to make it a "dual-only" day, however.
"Tiny" weighed in at 250+ pounds and had trouble fitting in the back seat of the Birddog. The joke was that whenever we flew with him, we were afraid the tail wheel would break off ... a situation that actually happened once to me much later, but that's another story.
We flew to Enterprise at low altitude and shot a couple landings. He then told me to leave the traffic pattern in a certain direction. Tiny liked to have his students practice emergency landing procedure over and over again, so I wasn't surprised when he pulled the throttle back and informed me that my engine had just died. Our altitude, however, was a bit lower than good judgment might dictate. But what the heck, the engine wasn't REALLY dead.
There was a large, flat pasture up ahead, a perfect field, so I went through the drill of "establish a glide, select a field" and simulate the fuel and the switches, etc. It was rather easy, straight into a good landing site within almost perfect best glide ratio.
I think that when he realized that this was too easy, or maybe when he realized that we were running out of sky, Tiny said something on the intercom such as "OK, let's get out of here." The engine rev'd up a bit, then coughed, sputtered, spit, backfired and flat died!
He yelled "I've got it!"
Thankfully, I was still lined up on this great cow pasture and that little extra boost from the engine gave us enough to ensure that we'd make it over the fence ... it was close, however! The landing was without incident, no damage and no injury.
The Birddog was trucked out of there a couple days later, but I don't know whether an engine problem was ever found ... we never saw that plane again. In his report, Tiny said it was some "unknown malfunction" that had "plagued" that particular O-1; on the other hand, I thought it was carb icing on a cold Alabama day (he wouldn't let you "clear" during these emergency
exercises)
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