Late Tour Scare
submitted by: Alva Leon Matheson
Author’s Note: There were German-sponsored hospitals around the country and they had a hospital ship anchored in DaNang harbor. They established a non-partisan hospital at An Hoa and treated anyone, regardless of their politics. The Lopez FACs had become close friends with the staff at the hospital and on occasion we had opportunity to transport blood and other items for the hospital. Doctors and nurses from the hospital regularly visited surrounding villages, providing medical care as needed.
During one of these visits to a coal-mining village in southern Quang Nam Province, south- west of An Hoa, two nurses (women) and two aids (men), were ambushed and kidnapped. We started watching intelligence reports and within a couple of weeks, a listening post on the Laotian border saw four Caucasian prisoners – two men and two women – walk across the border. I didn’t hear anything more about them for the rest of my tour, or for years to come. When the POWs were released from North Vietnam in 1973, I saw one of the German nurses (Monika Schwinn) and one of the men (Bernhard Diehl) listed among the returning POWs. The other woman and the other man died in captivity. Their story has been published and is available. It is entitled We Came to Help. I emphasize that these were German civilian noncombatants.
Back to our story – Lieutenant Colonel Self and I had fortunately taken a brand new “slick” airplane that day with no rocket pods hanging on it. Colonel Self was flying and he requested a “Standard Lopez Approach” to An Hoa. This involved a gradual descent from a couple of miles out with full power, crossing the approach end of the runway as fast as the O-2 would go (not very fast), flying down the runway at about 15 feet, pulling up at the end to a downwind, dropping the landing gear and flaps, and turning to final for landing. We were cleared and started our approach.
Everything went normally, and as we were turning to final we heard the tower clear an HH- 53 helicopter to land and taxi to the far end of the runway.
We descended toward the runway in idle. Suddenly the airplane was thrown into a violent bank to the left and we were perpendicular to the ground. The helicopter had remained on the approach end of the runway, just off to the left side and we got into the rotorwash.
Without thinking I grabbed the controls, slammed the yoke to the right and stomped full right rudder, as I pushed the throttles to full power. The airplane rolled level, but because the engines were coming up from idle we were slipping sidewise toward the rotors of the helicopter. After what seemed an eternity, the aircraft started to accelerate and we flew away from the helicopter, at an angle across the runway, and over the base.
I had a death grip on the yoke and I couldn’t let go of the controls of the airplane. Then I realized my faux pas.
Colonel Self had thousands of hours and had flown everything from the C-47 to the F-106. I was at the end of my tour, but I had come directly from UPT (via Hurlburt, Clark, and Phan Rang) to DaNang. Still unable to let go of the controls, I started apologizing profusely for taking the aircraft. As the apologies continued I heard this voice come from behind me saying, “That’s OK, son.”
I looked left and no one was there. I looked farther back and there was Colonel Self. His seat had slid full aft and he had no control of the airplane. When he adjusted the seat before take- off, the adjusting lever didn’t lock and when he reacted with right rudder, his seat slid back and he couldn’t reach the controls.
He re-adjusted his seat, took the aircraft back, re-entered the pattern, and landed. Our German friends didn’t even notice the brown stains on our flight suits.
The incident was never mentioned again, and a few days later the Freedom Bird took us home.
Editor’s Note: For the non-aviators, the matter of “who is flying the airplane” is a very important and sensitive one among pilots when there is a pilot and a co-pilot. A very strict protocol comes into play in transferring control from one to the other. It involves statements like “You’ve got it,” and “I’ve got it.” The lack of that protocol has probably killed more than a few pilots, crew, and passengers when the pilot became incapacitated or made a mistake in a critical situation. In this case, fortunately, it was not applied.