Training flight

EAF Pub
1

I am reading a nice book, Da Nang Diary, by Tom Yarborough.
It is the diary of one year tour of duyt of a OV-10 Bronco FAC pilot.
I found the following text quite interesting. It tells about the first flight on board of the Broncho

LONG POST - PART 1

After hearing the intel officer’s story, I was ready to go and itching to get back into the OV-10 after a six-week layoff. Finally, on April 28, I flew the first of four local refresher rides with squadron instructor pilots. Until then I had compiled a grand total of forty-three hours in the OV-10, so I wasn’t a pro by any stretch of the imagination. All of the new local procedures, coupled with my own rustiness from lack of stick time, made the need for going up with an IP to work out the kinks painfully clear. Fortunately, my instructor pilot for the day, Captain John Tait, a West Point graduate who had taken his commission in the Air Force, was a patient soul with lots of empathy for new beans like me.
As John and I walked up to the sandbag-and-metal revetment sheltering our assigned aircraft, number 654, he gave me some advice on the plane’s aerodynamics: “Take a good look at this little beauty in the clean configuration. You won’t see her that way often, much less fly her that way.” He paused for a long time before continuing. “The bird is sleek looking today, just like you flew in training back at Hurlburt. But within a week you’ll be flying her loaded down with a 230-gallon centerline fuel tank and all kinds of rocket pods. With all that stuff hanging, the frontal drag is tremendous. It’ll be like switching from a sports car to a truck.” I found myself hanging on John’s every word while drinking in the view of the machine I was about to spend the next year flying and fighting in. The Bronco was a relatively new aircraft, first test-flown in 1965. That made it all the more appealing to me. Originally designed as a counterinsurgency light attack aircraft, the OV-10 entered the 20th TASS inventory in the operational forward air controller mode in July 1969. With its twin turboprop engines, four machine-guns, ejection seat, and great cockpit visibility, the Bronco became a perfect addition to the FAC inventory. For me, being able to fly the OV-10 was like a dream come true.Deceptively large, the Bronco measured forty-one feet long, fifteen feet high, and sported a forty-foot wingspan. Sitting on the ramp in its gray war paint, the OV-10 conjured up two vivid images for me. First, it looked mean, like a praying mantis about to spring. Second, with the fuselage and cockpit suspended between twin booms and twin tails, it reminded me of the legendary P-38 Lightning of World War II fame. As a kid I had devoured every airplane book in the library, and some of my favorite stories were about the exploits of the P-38 pilots of the Southwest Pacific, men like Dick Bong, Tom Lynch, Tom McGuire, and Tom Lanphier and his incredible interception and shoot-down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. I used to fantasize that it was more than mere coincidence that I shared the same first name with most of them and that a mystical link flowed from past to present. Mystical or not, the tangible link lay in the similarity between the two airplanes. I may have been born too late to fly the P-38, but the OV-10 was all mine, and it was a love affair from the beginning.
John Tait introduced me to the line chief and to several of the crew chiefs. He didn’t make a big deal about it, but the gesture told me a lot about John and his respect for the hard-working maintenance troops. I made a mental note to copy John’s style of talking to the crew chiefs often and of sharing a few details about the missions.The moment had finally arrived. Following a lengthy preflight, I strapped into the front ejection seat while John did the same in back. Fumbling around with the maze of switches and controls, I silently chided myself for being so nervous. Sweat poured off me in buckets. I wanted to get off on the right foot with John and to make a good impression on him, because my future reputation in the squadron might well hinge on whether John Tait thought I was a good prospect or a doofus klutz.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

2

(PART 2)

After running through the rest of the checklist, I signaled the crew chief by extending my right index finger in a twirling motion. He repeated the signal, so in sequence I cranked the right, then the left Garrett turboprop engines. As the engines spooled up to speed, I kept watching the young crew chief and the CO2 fire extinguisher he held. For some crazy reason I caught myself thinking about a conversation I had heard a few days earlier between two old heads. The gist was that if an engine caught on fire during start up, the pilot was pretty much on his own. Rumor had it that most of the extinguishers were only half charged because the young maintenance troops used them to cool down cases of warm beer. Fortunately, both of 654’s engines cranked perfectly, so I released the brakes and we taxied out of the revetment area and within minutes we were airborne.
Using my new call sign, Covey 221, I checked in with “Panama,” Da Nang’s tactical radar control center. We started a climbing turn to the east, which carried us across the narrow strip of land between the runway and the beach. There wasn’t much opportunity for sightseeing, though. My head was on a swivel because the air around the base teemed with every conceivable size and shape of aircraft. I counted at least a dozen helicopters in the immediate area, all swarming around like bees at a hive. A flight of F-4 Phantoms arched gracefully in front of me, leaving an exhaust trail of black smoke visible from ten miles away. The MiG pilots up north didn’t need good eyes—the Phantom’s black smoke was a dead giveaway. Sandwiched in among all those war birds, a C-7 Caribou at my altitude droned slowly southeast along the coastline, and an O-2 slightly below me cruised in directly over the twin spans of the I Corps bridges. I asked John over the intercom, “Is it always this crowded?” As he keyed his intercom button, I watched in the mirror as he nodded yes.
“That’s one thing you’ll have to get used to about Da Nang,” John replied. “You’ve really got to stay alert with all this traffic. But it’s not always this bad. Check your clock.” Puzzled, I glanced at the instrument panel. It was about 12:10. John smiled and continued. “Lunch time. Everybody comes back into the pattern at once. We must be having something really good at the dining hall today. Hell of a way to fight a war, isn’t it?”
Climbing through fifteen hundred feet, we crossed the coast and went “feet wet,” the radio term used to signify that we were flying over the warm waters of the South China Sea. In one of our intel sessions the briefer had solemnly advised us that, if we had the choice, a feet-wet bail out was preferable to one over dry land, because there were “no bad guys to speak of, and no ground fire. It makes for an easy helicopter rescue.” As I thought about his advice and looked down into that incredibly dark blue water, I wondered about sharks.
We had a perfect day for flying. Visibility was clear and a million miles in bright dazzling sunshine. In our sector there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Far to the east I could see a squall line moving parallel to shore, and by late afternoon a few of those cells would top forty thousand feet, but at the moment they were no threat to us. All I could think about was how great it was going to be to go upside down again and pull Gs. When we were about ten miles off the coast, John seemed to read my mind. “Okay, Tom, I know it’s been a while. Go ahead and wring her out. Just don’t break anything.” He didn’t have to say it twice. I rolled the aircraft inverted into a split-S and off we went. Coming out at the bottom of the maneuver, heading in the opposite direction and doing well over 250 knots, I sucked in four Gs and pulled us up into a loop. As we zoomed straight up through the vertical, I tipped my head back to pick up the horizon, then eased the OV-10 over the top on her back, using the inverted horizon as a reference to keep the wings level. Coming down the back side, I fed in just a little too much back pressure, causing a mild bucking action called a buffet or burble, the airplane’s aerodynamic way of telling me to ease off the Gs or we’d go into an accelerated stall. At the bottom of the loop it felt too good to stop, so I pulled us right back up into a Cuban-eight, followed by all four leaves of a clover leaf, and finished off the series with an Immelmann. Reluctantly, I had to give in when John insisted we get on with the profile. He had me demonstrate a traffic pattern stall series and some slow flight, then we headed back to Da Nang for some practice instrument work.

(TO BE CONTINUED)

3

(PART 3)

As we coasted back toward Da Nang Bay, I spotted a lone O-2 about a mile to my left on a parallel course but slightly lower. It was the perfect setup for an old fashioned bounce. Briefly, I considered the wisdom of showing my fanny on my first ride, but on the other hand the IP might think less of me for not being aggressive. Mind made up, I dropped behind the O-2 and closed in from his six o’clock position. Moving in to start the game, I couldn’t be sure if my opponent had ever “rat-raced” before—he might embarrass me big time. But at Hurlburt I had tangled with a few O-2s, and although they could be a handful with the right pilot at the controls, they were generally no match for the OV-10. Known affectionately as the “Oscar Deuce,” the O-2 was essentially the military version of the Cessna Skymaster, a light aircraft with one 210-horsepower reciprocating engine in the front and another at the rear. Among some O-2 jocks, the unique engine placement spawned another nickname, “Suck and Blow.”
As I pulled up beside my target, I could see it wasn’t a FAC-configured O-2 but rather the psychological warfare version equipped with a vent for dumping propaganda leaflets over the VC and with a loudspeaker for audio appeals for enemy troops to defect to the South. Throughout Southeast Asia, everybody referred to them as “bullshit bombers.”
John must have known what I had in mind, but he never said a word. He simply watched intently as we slipped into a wide route position beside the O-2. I waggled my wings to get his attention, and when the pilot looked at me, I started the mock battle by executing a roll over the top of him. Watching from the inverted position out the top of my canopy, I knew he had played the game before when he pitched out into a hard left bank and dived for the deck. With John hanging on in the backseat, we dished out the bottom of the roll at full power and closed the distance between us in no time.
The O-2 jock responded by performing a series of abrupt clearing turns called a horizontal scissors maneuver, first to the right, then back to the left. Rather than match him move for move, I reduced power and hung back a thousand feet and just below him, safely tucked into his natural blind spot. As I continued to close, my opponent must have spotted me because he snapped the O-2 into a tight left turn. At that speed the Oscar Deuce could out turn me, so rather than play his game, I took the fight up into the vertical by executing a high-G barrel roll to the right, a tactic known as a lag maneuver. I eased out the bottom almost directly in trail, about fifteen hundred feet to his rear. Thinking he had probably lost me or caused me to overshoot, the O-2 gradually settled into wings-level flight. Dumb. The guy didn’t deserve to be let off the hook, so I moved directly behind him with my gunsight pipper superimposed on his rear engine. Switching my radio to Guard emergency transmit, I blasted him with a loud verbal “tac-tac-tac-tac-tac,” simulating the sound of machinegun fire. Everyone listening to Guard frequency instantly recognized the sound and probably chuckled at the humiliation they knew the bounced pilot must be feeling. When I moved back into a route position off his left wing, we had a clear view of the pilot staring at us, but I couldn’t see his eyes because his dark visor was down. A boom microphone attached to his helmet partially hid his moving lips, yet it didn’t take a genius to figure out what he must have been muttering. As confirmation of his bad mood, the O-2 jock pressed his gloved left hand, middle finger extended, against the window, then rolled into a gentle right bank for his unceremonious departure from the scene.
With the fun and games over, John and I pressed on with the rest of the training mission. For starters, Da Nang Approach Control vectored me for a straight-in TACAN approach to Runway 17 Left. I was supposed to fly strictly on instruments while John kept a sharp eye out for other traffic, but it was harder to do than it sounds. Sitting in the front cockpit, focusing on instruments and concentrating on my crosscheck, I could still see everything going on around us through my peripheral vision. I couldn’t resist peeking as two helicopters crossed my final approach course. Then John warned me about a VNAF A-37 turning final in front of me. Just when the distractions were about to drive me into a fit of frustration, Approach Control sent us around for two F-4s behind us who had declared emergency fuel.
The same sort of thing happened on a radar approach. The controller finally broke me off at two miles from touchdown. As the controller radar vectored us away from the field, John explained that Da Nang was the busiest airport in the world, with more takeoffs and landings each year than Chicago O’Hare. We decided to give it one last try. Finally, we got clearance back to the beacon for an ADF approach. I screwed up the holding pattern entry royally, but eventually we managed to shoot the published approach all the way to a touch-and-go landing. Rather than press our luck, we stayed in the closed pattern for six more touch-and-goes. After the novelty of the first few wore off, I mentioned to John that the takeoff roll seemed a little too long and the plane felt sluggish at list-off. With just the slightest edge in his voice John explained, “You’re not in that balmy weather at Hurlburt. Runway temperature here is over one hundred degrees, so the engines aren’t cranking out as much shaft horsepower. Accept the longer takeoff roll, and let her get a few more knots before you lift off. Just wait till you fly this baby at max gross weight. The roll is so long you’ve got time to sing all four verses of the Air Force song.” Embarrassed at not having thought about the effects of high temperature, I let the subject drop. John took the full-stop landing, and we taxied back to the Covey revetments.
When we climbed out of the cockpit, I was soaking wet and really tired. John looked fresh; his hair wasn’t even messed up when he took off his helmet. He must have seen the expression on my face because as we walked back to operations to debrief the ride, John told me, “You should carry some water with you. I use a baby bottle, but anything unbreakable will do. This heat will really dehydrate you fast, so take a few big gulps now and then and you won’t get so worn out.” I never flew another mission without a baby bottle full of water.

4

A baby bottle:roflmao:
Sometimes flying SoW I need a commode:rolleyes:

Stevie

5

Good one.
BTW Red. I usually have some soda and a glass of whiskey when I strap into my virtual cockpit. Neither are unbreakable :wink:

If any of you are interested in reading more about the Bronco, I can recommend “A lonely kind of war”

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_2_15/160-6287607-3307566?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=a+lonely+kind+of+war&sprefix=A+lonely+kind+o%2Caps%2C229&crid=3P3POC9FK69YK

The guy ended up flying secret missions supporting black ops penetrating into North Vietnam.

6

The guy ended up flying secret missions supporting black ops penetrating into North Vietnam.

Same story as “Da Nang Diary” :slight_smile: Very interesting.
In the last months I am reading a lot of books about Vietnam: helicopter pilots, FAC pilots, LLRP, SOG…

7

My interest in the Vietnam air-war came late.

A few years ago, a friend of mine insisted that I borrowed one of his books written by a F105 pilot. I subsequently bought both the books from the same pilot.
From then on I was hooked dived into pilots flying Sandy and FAC.
The books by the 105 pilot are by far the best written and with the best perspective of the USAF way of organizing, its approach to training, and the strategic overview.

(Ed Rasimus: “PALACE COBRA” and “When Thunder Rolled”. Each describing one of his tours to Vietnam)

8

You are challenging me…
Here are my preferred book from the Vietnam war

Black Cat 2-1 - The True Story of a Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and His Crew - Bob Ford
Low Level Hell - Hugh Mills & Robert Anderson
Taking Fire_ The True Story of a Decorated Chopper Pilot - Alexander, Ron & Sasser, Charles
Secret Commandos behind the eneemy lines - John Plaster
Warrior Soul_ The Memoir of a Navy SEAL - Chuck Pfarrer
15 Months in SOG_ A Warrior’s Tour - Tom Nicholson
Eyes of the Eagle_ F Company LRPs in Vietnam, 1968 - Gary A Linderer
Chickenhawk - R.Mason
Snake Pilot: Flying the Cobra Attack Helicopter in Vietnam - Randy Zahn
Guts 'N Gunships: What it was Really Like to Fly Combat Helicopters in Vietnam - Mark Garrison (Author)
Xin Loi, Viet Nam: Thirty-one Months of War: A Soldier’s Memoir Mass Market Paperback - Al Sever
Rolling Thunder (Wings of War vol. 1) - Mark Berent
Phantom Leader (Wings of War vol. 3) - Mark Berent
Steel Tiger (Wings of War vol. 2) - Mark Berent
Eagle Station (Wings of War vol. 4) - Mark Berent
Storm Flight (Wings of War vol.5) - Mark Berent

Mark Berent five books are novels, but the guy was a former pilot in Vietnam