Article on the Huey

[Milli]

Just came across this article about training Huey pilots, during the Vietnam era.

 

http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/heroes-fort-wolters-180956245/

 

Regards,

Milli

[kingpinda]

Thanks! nice read!

[QuiGon]

I just read "Chickenhawk" by Robert Mason, who was a Warrant Officer Huey pilot in the legendary 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and wrote this book about his experiences in Nam. His account of the flight school in the book was quite funny, thanks to typical military sarcasm :D

 

From the linked article:

A teenage enlistee at the recruitment center might have had visions of an exciting, all-expenses-paid helicopter career, but he may have missed the part about having to go through not just one but two spit-and-polish phases called boot camp. The second, at Wolters, was called preflight school, and for warrant officer candidates it lasted four miserable weeks, a purgatory ruled by a living terror known as the TAC (Training, Advising, and Counseling) officer, who specialized in finding all levels of imperfections, down to misalignment of socks in the drawer, uniforms in the closet, and notebooks on the desk. An infraction by one WOC could bring down fire upon his entire preflight class.

 

In the book, when he and his buddy arrived at the flight school, he said about that: "We would've never thought the army trains people how to fly helicopters the same way they thaugt them how to march and fire rifles ... but they did". :D