this was crazy your dad was still in the navy at this time yeah and he’s now an officer and he’s in freaking saigon yeah yeah he was living well he was one of the ramps he was one of the rims in saigon well deserved i mean after he fought world war ii and was on submarines i got no real problem with him enjoying some time in saigon so i went and asked company commander i said hey sir this is sanders still i said uh and he was sanders getting cords at the end of his tour so i said hey my dad’s in saigon uh can could he come up and fly three days with me or something like that and i thought sanders would say you know hell no but he said sure bring him up okay we’ll bring him up so dad came up and i picked him up in saigon he jumped in the front seat before you get there when you’re in saigon i know you went to uh officers club with him oh yeah and they they come to kick you out well as you’re going into the officers club you see like a bunch of nice pistols hanging up on the wall and you’re thinking secured yeah unscared no one’s watching them and you’re thinking well that doesn’t seem very smart so then you sit down having some lunch with your dad they kicked us out they kick you out because you’re not a field grade officer that’s right which is a a major lieutenant commander above so they kick you out on your way out some of those weapons we’re with you [Laughter] so you end up with a nice instead of that 38 caliber pistol that wasn’t very effective you end up with a 45 a nice 1911 i’m sure no not that’s not quite this the right way let’s just say that when i got back to light k i had a brand new 45 okay so so your dad ends up freaking coming up how old your dad at this point uh dad’s probably in about 43-44 okay he’s in the game oh yeah he’s in the game i think he was he was about 50 when he retired from the navy and this was three years before he retired from the navy so he’s in his late 40s okay uh so he came up and uh what was he doing what was he some kind of a liaison or something no no he was uh in j6 at mcv headquarters communications and uh i guess i can say it now it’s not classified anymore but he was working on the communications plan for the repatriation of pows got it is is what he was doing at the time so so he came up to lycae and spent about three days with it flew as my crew chief or you know his flu is my door gunner gave my my crew chief some time off but he did good he he had have his ass chewed a little bit yeah so what so tell us about the first gun fight again that’s a good one yeah we’re flying along there and uh he’s we’re working the lz’s and he’s doing good clearing us in clearing us out stuff like that so we got the troops on board troops all get on the aircraft and dad’s uniform is the same as ours fatigues and he had his major his lieutenant commander’s leaf on you which is just a little smaller than the the army major leaf the grunts are back there in the back and all of a sudden somebody starts pulling on my collar oh my god i look over this there’s grunts pulling he goes hey sir what’s your rank i said i’m at w-2 why and he goes damn did that major back there screw up since he’s your door gunner so i told him no it’s my dad he’s flying with us so they thought that was pretty cool so we go in on this combat assault we were in chalk five or six position and uh we’re going in in a staggered right formation so you got one aircraft in front of you and you got one off to the side six minutes out the artillery goes in the artillery cuts off at two minutes out the cobras roll hot one minute out door gunners open fire and right away we start seeing green tracers and i hear my crew chief’s gun firing but i don’t hear my dads and i say dad open fire nothing and i’m thinking oh [ __ ] he’s been hit and i turn over my shoulder and look he’s standing on the skids he’s got his monkey harness on and he’s taking pictures out in front i got on that i got on the intercom i said dad get your ass in here and get on that goddamn gun so he gets on the gun when we got back uh we had a discussion about crew chief dude he’s a door gunner on the aircraft and he wrote my mother and he says you know i’ve had a lot of ass tunes in my navy career but that’s the worst one i’ve ever had and he took it i would give him credit he took it uh quite well and uh he came back and flew this about three or four times that’s crazy uh i i like this this conversation you had with your dad it says uh he says i noticed one thing different about those air force pilots from you guys air force pilots seem to be outgoing and always in a positive mood versus you guys who always seem withdrawn and pensive he explained and then you replied dad an air force pilot is that way because he’s flying a machine that wants to fly and if left alone will generally fly quite well on its own in addition compared to a helicopter an airplane has very few moving parts that can cause a serious malfunction on the other hand helicopter pilots fly a machine that does not want to fly and only does and only does so by the interactions of the pilot to balance four forces all opposed to each other plus a helicopter has a lot of moving parts any of which breaking can and does cause a major disaster helicopter pilots are moody because we know something is going to break if it hasn’t done so already that’s right that gave the old man something to think about yeah dad had flown with uh one of the things he did when he came up to the like hey we had a uh ov10 squadron that flew out of there the broncos and we got him a ride in one and he went out and flew at them he flew with a captain rider an australian captain as an exchange officer and he thought that was pretty cool out there flying with those guys and so when he came back in that night that’s when this this conversation came up about you know the fighter pilots they’re just jovial and happy etc and you guys you’re all kind of moody and down in the dumps i said yeah that’s why you know we fly something that doesn’t want to fly harry reisner about 1973 wrote a great article about helicopter pilots and helicopters it’s it’s kind along that same line is what uh what dad nice conversation was yeah well it’s like you said a a a plane you can you can let go of the stick and it’ll kind of just cruise for a while yeah it’ll fly itself but a helicopter is not that’s not happening no that’s not happening that’s not happening they have now uh helicopters that do have an autopilot on them but in those days you let go of those controls in the huey now no telling where she’s going to go uh
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