Inside the Glass Bubble at Vihn Long

At Fort Wolters, Texas, where Army primary flight school was taught in the sixties and very early seventies, we flew out of three large heliports. All of the fifteen hundred or so helicopters were stationed and serviced at the heliports. The instructors and students would take off from the heliports and go to smaller fields called stage fields to train. At the end of the training period the helicopters would then return to the large heliports to be serviced and readied for the next training period.

Most of the stage fields were all given names from US Army bases or cities of Vietnam. I guess that was to help the students learn to say the names of the places where they would shortly be flying. The only other possible reason I could think of was to make the instructor pilots, who had all just returned from Vietnam, feel at home. But for whatever reason the Army had chosen those names.

While I was training the pilots who had returned from Vietnam to be instructor pilots, we were training at a stage field called Vihn Long. It was located about twenty miles west from two of the heliports where we normally got our aircraft. Our support people such as the tower operator, crash rescue and fuel truck all drove out to the stage field early in the morning while we flew out there.

We alternated flying a week of mornings and a week of afternoons. When we flew in the morning we arrived for our flight briefing at 5:45 AM. After a brief discussion on the day’s training and a weather briefing, we went to our aircraft and got ready to take off. By 7:00 AM we were normally in the air. We wanted to beat the morning rush hour when most of the rest of the fifteen hundred helicopters were taking off.

One grey cloudy Texas winter morning as I drove into the flight line, I thought it was going to be a no-fly day. The clouds were not too high and it certainly looked like it would start raining any minute. The little TH-55 helicopters that we flew were only basic flying machines. They were not equipped with instrumentation for flying in the clouds nor did the aircraft have navigational instruments. They also did not have the capability to remove ice, which can happen when flying in rain at cool temperatures. Yup, it sure looked like a sit-around-and-tell-war-stories kind of day.

Early in our briefing the weather forecast was read to the group and just as I thought; it wasn’t good. The forecast called for a cold front to pass through causing freezing rain. When a cold front passes it often slides under the existing warmer air, forcing the warm air to rise. If the warm air has quite a bit of moisture in it rain will start to fall through the colder air below and freeze on things. Helicopters could be one of those things on which rain could freeze.

So when the weather report was read we all thought we would sit around for a couple of hours and then get released for the day. But the flight commander announced that we were going to launch. Well, by “we” he meant the flight instructors not himself. His job was to be in charge of the flying but not to fly himself. It really was a good idea that we did the flying and he stayed on the ground. He wasn’t that good of a pilot but that’s another story.

When the flight commander announced that we were going to fly in spite of the weather all of the instructors asked if he had heard the weather report. We all knew he had heard it but were not certain he had understood what he had heard. He assured us he was well aware of the weather and that we were to launch.

With the weather report had come a notice that all flights were to stand by and not launch until cleared because of the weather. Our flight (group of instructors) was always exempt from those limitations on launching. Because our flight consisted of totally qualified pilots, not student pilots going through flight school, we could make our own decisions about flying in the poor weather. But, no matter who was going to fly the aircraft that was not the weather to be flying TH-55s. Under the protests of the instructors, the flight commander insisted that we fly to Vihn Long and train.

Partially because the commander told us to launch and partially because we were young, foolish and aggressive, we went to the heliport and got our aircraft ready. I was the first one ready to take off and when I called the tower for takeoff clearance he asked me if I knew about the weather. My response was that I knew about the weather and we were told to launch and so I was launching. The tower operator knew from my call sign that I could go in any weather and so he cleared me for take off.

West, my copilot, and I went into the grey cloudy morning. We could see that the clouds were really low but by descending lower and altering our course we were able to skirt around them and continue generally west. When we were just a few miles from Vihn Long stage field, I was finally able to make radio contact with their radio tower. He asked me about the weather even before I could ask him. I told him how poor the weather was on the trip out and then he said it was even worse at Vihn Long. There was a light rain at Vihn Long and it was freezing to everything.

I asked the tower operator if he thought it was possible for us to get to Vihn Long and get on the ground. We just wanted to get safely back to mother earth and from Vihn Long we could catch a ride back with the tower operator, crash rescue or fuel truck. The tower operator said he didn’t think I could make it in there and suggested I turn around as soon as possible and see if we could make it home.

Instantly we turned around and headed for home but the weather was getting worse all the time. The clouds we had skirted around were now lower and some were starting to drop rain. If the rain fell on the helicopter it would freeze on all of its surfaces. Ice on the blades reduces the lift they can produce and ice on the fuselage makes the helicopter heavier so it takes more lift to keep it up. Those two conditions make for a potentially deadly combination.

As soon as we had turned around I called the others in our flight that were also headed to Vihn Long and told them to turn around and head back to the heliport. After about five minutes on our return flight the rain started falling on us. It took less than a minute for the plexi-glass bubble of the helicopter to be covered in a thin sheet of ice. We were now inside this frosted glass looking bubble and couldn’t see out. We couldn’t see where we were going or which side was up. The helicopter has a token heater but it was no match for the freezing rain.

The side doors on the helicopter were made out of clear plastic and were not very strong. In the door just below eye level was a vent that was about three inches in diameter. With my fist I smacked the vent good and hard and it flew off and was gone. I bent over and put my eye to the hole where the vent had been. I could now see the ground and tell which way was up. The pilot flew the aircraft at an angle so I could see the ground. With my directing him, the pilot flew slowly and carefully to an open field. We landed in one piece. We didn’t know exactly where we were but we had made it to the ground right side up and that was the most important thing.

Once on the ground where cold air was not blowing on the windscreen the heater was able to do a little better job of keeping up with the freezing rain. After a few minutes it appeared that the ice on the bubble might be melting a bit so with credit card in hand I got out and went to work scraping ice off the windscreen. A credit card was not the ideal ice scraper but I was able to get a good portion of the ice off the windscreen. We could now see where we were going.

Once again we headed for the heliport. Again we tried to dodge the rain showers but they were getting more numerous. Soon the windscreen started to get covered with ice. Again we made our slow careful approach to an open field. Then we took off for the heliport again.

Soon we were close enough to the heliport to call them on the radio and tell them that we wanted to land. The tower responded by telling us that we were the only ones out there that they knew of. In a few more minutes we were back on the ground at the heliport.

While shutting down the aircraft we heard the last member of our flight, Bill, trying to make his way back into the heliport. All the others had made it back already. We heard Bill call the tower for landing clearance so I waited to see him touch down. In a few moments he called the tower again and told them that he was not where he thought he was. What Bill thought was the heliport was really another stage field. The weather was so bad and his windscreen so covered with ice that he couldn’t even tell where he was.

We waited with our radio on to see how things would play out. In a few minutes we saw Bill’s aircraft approaching from the opposite direction from where he had just reported his location. He then got the heliport in sight and made an approach from where he was even though it was downwind. Bill made it back to the ground with the rest of us. All were safe. The entire effort accomplished no worthwhile training and had put lives at risk.

Four or five aircraft had launched and every instructor pilot in every aircraft knew it was not safe. Every one of us knew we should have said, “No, we are not going. It is not safe and not worth the risk.” Lives and assets had been put at risk in a wild gamble to do a little training. In later years Army aviation started using a risk assessment form to determine if a mission was worth the risk. Weather, aircraft and crew capabilities and many more things are now evaluated against the importance of the mission. Some times we found that a high-risk mission was so important that the risk was necessary but most of the time we found that there was a way to reduce the risk of the mission or it was determined that the mission was not worth the risk.

There are times when we take risks that are just not worth it. We go places where the risk is high or we travel when the risk is high. Sometimes we make financial, business, career or other decisions that are high risks. Why do we make these high-risk moves? Probably most often because we don’t think about the risks involved. If we took just a little time to evaluate the risks involved we would make better decisions. Ask yourself is what I am about to do really worth it’s risk? If it is then go ahead – if not, you have to admit that you acted foolishly if you go ahead and meet with disaster.